Sometimes Blue
by Chibi Haku
Summary: 10xRose - It had always been a gingerbread house, that parallel world, Rose had just never realised how much. They helped her get back to him, but there's always a cost, and she's learning that some secrets are best left unshared.
1. Chapter 1

It was supposed to have been a day off.It was _supposed_ to have been an honest-to-goodness, designated, 'mark it on the calendar, boys!' day off where nothing was supposed to happen. They had monitored (And Jack meant he and Tosh by they) the earth and its surrounding spaces for weeks, making sure that nothing was coming, or already here so that they could all take a personal day, and they all had their plans. Jack included. (There was a pretty half-human thing that lived not two streets down and Jack had its number on speed-dial.) He had sent them home, the evening before, explicitly taking them all aside and telling them, "Don't come in."

He had said that, those exact words. And then he had to add on, just tacked onto the end, "Unless there's an emergency."

... Nearly as bad as 'nothing can possibly go wrong'; those words.

And so, Jack had stepped out into the streets of Cardiff full of upmost confidence in the fact that nothing would happen, and had prepared himself for what had promised to be a very good time, knowing that the other members of Torchwood were planning to do… well, not quite the same, but something similar. So he really should have expected it, but as has been stated, he thought it was going to be a day off.

He stepped out of the base and was blasted by a fresh breeze coming off the river, which he breathed in deeply, a smile on his chiseled features, hands in his large overcoat's pockets, satisfaction in the sigh he let out. He took a step forward.

As if on cue, the sky exploded.

There was a tremendous rattling boom as the ground around him shook and split, a hole the size of a human appeared in the blue just above his head, and through it a girl was rather unceremoniously dropped, like a giant of a giant had decided she wasn't an interesting enough toy for him. Jack leapt into action, throwing himself forward and under where she fell, spreading his arms and shouting "I've got you! Don't worry!" into the early morning breeze. He lunged forward and she landed in his arms, nearly jarring them off his body, but somehow he managed to hold on, squeezing her almost stick-like thinness close to him, feeling her ribs under his fingers and through her clothes. Whoever she was, she hadn't eaten for a long while. Jack slowed from his mad dash to catch her and stopped, moments before he would have run into the pier barrier, holding the girl and finally looking down at her, meeting her hazel eyes with his own. She was so thin that he had barely recognized her, and suddenly wasn't surprised that he hadn't from her figure alone.

"Hello." She said, in a familiar Londoner accent. She sounded breathless, woozy and a little sick.

"Hello." He replied, sounding and feeling slightly shell shocked.

"Hello." She said again.

There was an awkward moment in which they both looked at each other, identical sheepish grins on their faces, identical slightly nervous laughs escaping them as Jack helped the girl to stand up properly, keeping his arm out to balance her.

And then, Rose Tyler fainted.

"Now I remember why this is so familiar." Captain Jack Harkness said, waving his free hand at the unconscious girl in his arms for emphasis.

Then he sighed, scooped her up properly into his arms and carried her, bridal style, back towards the Torchwood base.

"Rose Tyler." He said, shaking his head and barking out a disbelieving laugh. "So much for a day off." He stepped into the base and tried not to jostle the girl in his arms. He only hoped that Owen would take the interruption to the schedule better than he expected the man to.

* * *

"An emergency." Owen snapped, in his cockney drawl. "Don't come in unless it's an emergency, that's what I believe you told us, yeah." He pointed an accusing finger at Jack's chest. "What do you call this then? Where's the emergency?"

Jack remained silent as Gwen jumped vehemently to his defense. "Oh, don't be like that Owen, I'm sure Jack has a perfectly good reason for all of this, don't you Jack?"

"I bet it's because he missed us." Owen replied, with a toothy grin shot in his brunette companion's direction. "Can't go without us for one day, you know our Captain, he doesn't know anyone else."

"I think you're mistaking him for yourself, Owen." Gwen replied sharply, giving him a look that stated she was clearly impressed by the level of stupidity that the man was displaying.

"For your information," the team doctor said, "I happened to have a lovely evening planned."

"What, with your mother?" Gwen snapped daringly.

"So what if it was?"

The room paused for a minute, even the computers seemed to whir slightly in disbelief before Ianto decided to insert his opinion. "You spent your day off with your mother?" He said, one eyebrow raised.

"Yes." Owen snapped, "Or at least I was going to before I got called in to work by mister Big Shot Captain, now wasn't I. It's better than whatever you were going to do. Polishing your silverware collection or something, Ianto?"

"Now, Owen, that was uncalled for." Toshiko said quietly, and Owen looked slightly reprimanded. Jack sent a mental thank-you in Toshiko's direction for being the voice of reason in all of this. "Jack must have had a very good reason for calling us in." Then she paused with slight uncertainty, "You do have a good reason, right?"

Jack rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but Gwen spoke first. "Of course he does. He's just got to tell us what we possibly couldn't have accounted for when planning this day off."

"So what was it, Jack?" Owen started sarcastically, "Bombs hovering in the sky? Mutated rats in the sewers, another sex monster meteorite, a…" He trailed off.

"What, what is it, Owen?" Gwen asked, looking the slightly weedy man up and down.

Owen was looking towards the door. "Oh hello." He sounded incredibly appreciative, Jack thought with pride. Even when showing signs of vast malnourishment, Rose Tyler was still a… what was that word he had heard that girl use in relation to him? Oh yes, a _knockout._

All of the heads turned, and Jack, who still hadn't said anything (not for lack of trying) smiled slightly in victory. Rose stood in the doorway, a towel the only thing protecting her modesty from those in the room. It showed off her figure quite nicely, and Jack mentally congratulated himself on the idea of offering her use of the showering facilities. Ianto shot him a dirty look, and Jack mouthed 'what?' at him, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin he could manage. The others were busy looking at Rose, eyeing her warily and wondering at the security breach, no doubt.

"Jack?" Rose said quietly, and Jack looked in her direction, trying to hide his grin. The way she looked at him promised harsh retributions and he knew he had failed miserably. "Where did you put my clothes?"

Jack remembered the filthy rags that he had found her in, with disgust. "There's some clean clothes in a backpack under the pterodactyl perch, Rose." He said finally, monkey-grinning at the way her expression shifted.

"Pterodactyl?"

"You don't believe me?" He asked her, grin still firmly fixed in place, even growing from the baffled looks that his team were shooting at him 'covertly'.

She rolled her eyes, hitched her towel up a little higher, and frowned. "With all we've been through, Captain," She said solemnly, "Nothing would surprise me." She huffed at him and spun on one bare heel, showing off more of her legs than she no doubt intended, and Jack grinned. It was nothing he hadn't seen before – living on the TARDIS for those short months had meant some... unavoidable situations had occurred, but Owen looked greedily until Gwen swatted him over the head.

"Give the girl some privacy, would you?" She snapped at him.

Jack had the grace to not start laughing until Rose was out of hearing distance. He felt this disapproval of the others on him, all except Owen, who was looking in the direction the girl had gone with a bemused expression on his features.

"An explanation, Jack." Gwen demanded eventually, and Owen's head snapped around as Jack stopped laughing. "Who is she and what is she doing in Torchwood."

"More importantly, why didn't she seem surprised that we had a pterodactyl?" Toshiko added on, looking puzzled.

"You wanted an emergency, boys and girls, well there it went." Jack replied, looking all the while like a cat who had just eaten a canary dipped in a very large bowl of cream. Rose was _so_ going to kill him.

Oh, but was it worth it.

* * *

"Right!" The Doctor said enthusiastically, banging on one of the many panels of the TARDIS with hopeless abandon. "Donna, Just a quick fuel and supply stop, and then it's back to exploring the universe we go." He smiled at her, energetically hopping around the controls, hitting what seemed like random buttons on the circular console, running a hand through his scalp and scractching at it slightly.

"Where are we stopping off then?" the ginger-haired woman said slightly sulkily, "Some sort of Martian gas station or something?" She pointed a long, slender finger at him. "They better have magazines, Doctor, and not some bizarre alien ones either."

"Nope! Just Earth." The Doctor responded brightly, ignoring the Martian quip, simply because he didn't feel like explaining the fact that he wasn't from Mars for the 'n'th time.

"Where are you going to get Blue Box fuel on Earth? DisneyLand?"

"Cardiff!" The Doctor announced confidently, "Good Ol' Cardiff. Right on top of the Rift. Best fuel there is this side of the Galaxy. Well, I say best. Best that's readily accessible anyway. There are plenty more places but there are all sorts of nasty beasts guarding those, and last time I was there I lost a bet. Don't know about you, but I don't see why chickens would be a valuable source of currency, really. Didn't make much sense at the time." He paused and thought about it. "Makes even less now, I suppose."

"CARDIFF?" Donna stood up in indignation. "All of time and space and you're taking me to _Cardiff?_"

"What's wrong with Cardiff?" The Doctor asked, nonplussed. "They have this great chip shop, right on the corner, and there's the Millennium Center and... no. Right. Suppose that's about it, really, but moving on. Fuel."

"I'm going to kill you." Donna said, sullenly.

The Doctor merely laughed, flicking another switch. The TARDIS gave a sickening lurch which sent Donna to the ground.

"...That's not supposed to happen." The Doctor said.

"I don't know what you're on about, Mister. The way you drive it always happens."

"Nonono." The Doctor said, and shushed her for good measure. He let his head hover over the TARDIS console. "What's wrong with you, my girl?"

"Who are YOU calling _your_ girl!" Donna demanded, swelling up in indignant rage.

"Donna, be quiet for a minute, would you? There's something wrong with the TARDIS."

* * *

Rose heard them talking as she headed back towards the room where they all had gathered, and discreetly listened in to the words they passed amongst themselves.

"But I did a scan as soon as you called us all back!" One of the females insisted. "There was no sign of alien activity, other than the usual monitored stuff that there always is."

"That's because she's not alien." Jack replied in a voice that showed his patience was being tried.

"What about the biological scans, did they show anything?" The bad tempered, sarcastic one who'd been eyeing her off had asked.

"No, nothing." First voice again.

"Are you even listening to me? She's not alien." Jack again. Rose stood and stared at the doorway in front of her with something that resembled nervousness threatening to boil up within her. The entireity of the situation had just dawned on her, her knees were starting to shake. After so many years, and so many false starts, she had finally managed it – this was Earth, her Earth, and in that room was Captain Jack, whom she still selfishly thought of as hers, even though there had been so much distance separating them for so long.

It was all thanks to the Rift, which she had guessed would be in the same spot in her world, and had spent years trying to get across. Of course, she had felt all too silly when they had shown up and pointed out that she'd been going about it the wrong way from the start, but they'd helped her, which was frankly a lot more than she had expected from the initial greeting.

"What, nothing alien at all?" Different female voice. Welsh accent this time. "There's nothing alien about her at all? Why did you call us all in, Jack, if there's nothing alien about her at all?"

And she was back. Finally. With no clue where to begin to look, but Jack was here, seemed to be based here even, although she wasn't so certain about his working for Torchwood. She had... displeasing memories of Torchwood, or at least the one she wasn't in charge of.

Rose could hear the frown in Jack's voice as he spoke, his American accent bringing back fond memories for her, which seemed like they had occurred a lifetime ago. "None of you have actually been listening to me, have you? She's not from an alien world, she's from a parallel world. You're not supposed to be able to travel between parallel worlds, it rips apart the fabric of space and time. Emergency."

Rose sighed and leant against the wall outside of the room where they were all gathered, listening and wearing clothes which were slightly too big for her, but comfortable and practical. Easy to move in, she thought with a smile, easy to run and jump in. Whoever owned these clothes had obviously learnt the need for practicality over fashion. She smiled at the sleeve of her jumper, resisting the urge to pull at a loose thread.

"How do you know that, if, if anyone tried there'd be a hole ripped in space and time?" Sarcasm-boy snapped at Jack, and Rose decided it was time to make herself known.

"It's because you can avoid that if you're careful." Jack said as she stepped into the room. "But it takes finesse. More finesse than any human has ever had, forty times more." She walked around the table, and noted that all their attentions had shifted in her direction as she came and stood at Jack's shoulder. She tugged at the sleeve of her jumper and wished she had a belt or something to cinch around the middle and make it look less like a sack on her. "And more energy." Jack said. "Humans aren't physically capable of creating the machines necessary to traverse parallel worlds. For a start, the Void destroys any matter that tries to cross it."

"So how did she do it then?" The sarcastic one said, pointing a finger in Rose's direction. "If she's a human, from a Parallel world, how did she get here if we're not capable of the science."

"She has a name." Rose snapped at him. "And it's not she. In fact, she's going to slap you if you keep calling her she."

"Well then what is her name?" The man snapped. "Or is she too up herself to tell me it?"

Rose glared at him from over Jack's shoulder. "Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine." She snapped angrily.

He glared back, and gave her a two-fingered salute. "Start of a beautiful friendship, sweetheart."

There was a sigh from the other side of the table, and the welsh-sounding brunette waved at him dismissively. "That idiot's name is Owen." She gestured at the other members of the table in turn. "That's Ianto, that's Toshiko, Tosh for short, you already know Jack and I'm Gwen."

Rose nodded. "Rose." She said, looking around the table. "And that's all you're getting from me so don't bother trying for more."

Jack frowned at her. "_She_," And he grinned when Rose discreetly hit him in the shoulder "Is Rose Tyler – officially dead and unofficially stuck on a parallel world with no hope of getting back without destroying two realities. Or so I was told." He gave her a pointed look, but she refused to rise to the bait. It wasn't that she didn't want to tell him, it was that she wasn't _allowed_ to. They had sent her off with a strict warning about the damage that world-travel could do, and she had taken them seriously. It had taken a long time for them to even find a way to make the gap big enough for her to squeeze through without destroying the weak world tie that those particular worlds had. "How did you do it, Rose?" Jack asked, when the less direct approach failed to work.

"It's amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it." Rose said, grinning at him cheekily. Gwen sent her a dark look, which she raised both her eyebrows at. She patted Jack on the back. "You've just got to think long and hard."

There was a long, almost tangible pause that swept through the room.

"So are you going to tell us how you did it?" Jack asked at length.

Rose paused, as if considering it. "…No." she said. And beamed.

* * *

The Doctor frowned and scratched at his head again as he flicked another switch.

"Would you stop that?" Donna demanded, "You'll go bald, and it's bad enough that I'm travelling around with an alien, let alone a bald one."

"You know, you have the best people skills of anyone I've ever met." The Doctor said, sparing her a glance before going back to doing what he was doing.

"Thank you!" Donna said, genuinely smiling.

"I was being sarcastic. You should be used to that by now." He scratched at his head again. "Oh, what's _wrong_ with her?! She was fine yesterday, and all her readouts are fine. It's like she doesn't want to go back to Cardiff for some reason."

"I don't blame it, really." Donna commented, sitting down on the TARDIS' chair, legs tucked under her, and hands folded into her lap. "And what do you mean it doesn't want to go to Cardiff? It's a machine, it can't want anything, can it?"

"She's alive." The Doctor sighed, scratching at his hairline again. "She can want a lot of things."

"Oh would you stop that!" Donna snapped. "It's. Annoying."

"Like certain other things." The doctor quipped, ducking around the other side of the console before Donna thought to hit him for the comment. He frowned. "It's not my fault. It's itchy."

"Then don't scratch it." Donna replied, looking at the flashing lights of the TARDIS. "I don't see how you can make sense of all this, it's completely alien to me."

The Doctor looked around the console at her and raised an eyebrow.

"...Point taken." Donna said.

He returned his attention to the TARDIS "Now why don't you want to go get fuel?"The Doctor cooed at the console, rolling what looked like a rubber ball around in a groove for a moment. "You like Cardiff, you like the twenty-first century... Something else is there. Something else you don't like." He frowned. "What don't you like? It can't be Jack, we worked all that out last time. What is it?"

"You're mad."

"Thank you for your opinion, Donna, it wasn't helpful." He looked at the TARDIS. "You know, the more you say you don't want to go there, the more I want to take you there."

He reached up a hand to his hairline again.

"Oh stop it before I check you for lice." Donna snapped.

* * *

.

* * *

_A/n: ...My first Who-__fic__! I regretfully have moved on from the FMA fandom, I still love the show, but I've recently re-awakened my love for British TV –and it's sort of exploded into fan fiction. _

_Yes, this fiction takes place in the new __Who__ verse, but some references to the classic who will be made if I can find space for them. I'm not as good with my classic as I am with my new for obvious reasons. (That is, when classic had its last series, I was seven. __And shamefully not interested.__ –__hangs__ head-) _

_I'm using Donna as the companion because __Donna's__ series hasn't started yet, and it's going to be easiest to make a plausible story that could happen in Cannon with her. Of course, all fan fiction is AU by definition, but I like to delude myself sometimes._

_Don't worry, Martha fans, Martha's in this too!_

_...Rose is really hard for me to write, for some reason. Sorry if she's OOC, I'm trying to get into the groove of writing her._


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes, just sometimes, Rose wished that everything had been a little different. Just a little different, not world-stoppingly different or anything of that sort, but just if little things could be changed. She didn't wish for anything so stupid as that she hadn't been trapped in a parallel world – she had learnt better than to play with the events of time since her father had died for the second time, but she had never quite learnt her lesson about the small things.

For example she wished she hadn't cocked it up with Jack.

She wasn't quite sure how she knew, or even what it was she had done, but she had felt it, deep in her guts. There was something wrong hovering about him from the moment she had seen him again, something that nagged in the back of her brain, something that was ever so slightly off-putting and made her recoil if she wasn't playing close attention to her reactions. It was the things he said, the things that tore at her and the lies she had to say in order to stop her world from spinning frighteningly out of her control in a flickering instant, and if there was anything that the parallel world had taught her, it was to clamp down hard on her emotions and to simply get on with it.

She wondered if this was how Jack had felt, how if it was what – no. She wouldn't go down that path yet.

She'd given up her family already, and dwelling on the matter would not make it any less painful or heart breaking.

_"What'll you do now, Rose, with four little tombstones lined up in a row. Read their names to me, one at a time._"

Jacqueline, Mickey, Peter and Jack. The names on the withered stones burnt in her dreams, and she wished that there had been a way to stop it, to stop time, but there never was, and there never would be. She swallowed around the lump that appeared in her throat, as an unwanted memory swam to the forefront of her mind, her little brother Jack with his hand clutched around a teddy bear, rigor-mortis already setting in as the blood pooled around him. Only four years old. And that shape, standing over him, a shadow – she knew who it had been but didn't want to remember.

_"That's right, Rose. They're all dead__ now__All gone.__ And you know it's useless to fight me__ -__ You've tried.__"_

She spun, angrily, to confront the voice, but there was no one behind her in the hub, her ears merely rang with memory and time. It had been useless, but they'd stopped him even when she hadn't been expecting them to. He was one of their own, disobeying rule one so very blindly and they had stopped him because of that. Only because of that. She hadn't realized that most of the aliens she fought were _right_ and that they really were pompous old bastards with their heads shoved so far up their backsides that they could see the lining of their throats. They'd sent her back, and she had laughed at it, because they'd done it for the sole reason that she was wrong. Different. Out of time and space and it wasn't her world. They'd done her a favour for their own selfish reasons. They thought he'd brought her over to their world and that they were fixing everything by sending her back.

_"Rule one, never interfere. Rule two, never change the history of –"_ She shut out the voice in her mind and frowned at the computer monitors in front of her. The echoes were driving her mad, or maybe they were the result of a madness that had already been within her long before she had had anything to do with those grumpy old pricks.

"_What's more __important!__" She had yelled at their retreating backs, "Saving the world, or dabbling in politics! You can stop this!"_

_"We do not interfere."_

She played with the collar of one of the T-shirts Jack had bought her as she wandered aimlessly about the hub. Years, she'd waited, years that had felt like millennia to her and now she was stuck. Goal one was finished and goal two was yet to begin – she didn't even know where to start planning.

The sad thing was that even after all this time, she still loved him.

"I need to find the Doctor." She whispered to the empty room, and pressed her hand to her mouth in distress.

* * *

"HOW MANY TIMES, GWEN!" Jack yelled as they barreled down the narrow steel stairwell as fast as they could go, not caring that if they fell they would probably break their necks. It was either death by neck-breaking or death by angry monster at this stage, and as much as it didn't matter that much to Jack, he thought Gwen would more than definitely prefer the first to be written on her grave. "You don't shoot at the big angry ones! It just makes the angrier!"

"It was coming right at you!" The brunette protested as they leapt down the stairs two at a time, and then three when they heard the beast roar and chase after them. "What was I supposed to do, let it lop your head off?"

"...That would have been entertaining. We could have played an interesting sort of basketball." Jack said, pausing slightly to reflect upon this.

"SHUT UP AND KEEP RUNNING." Owen shouted, a flight down.

"Quite right too." Jack said, as they leapt onto the next landing and did a break-neck turn around the corner. The deafening thunder of monster-footsteps above one gave one a tremendous amount of athletic ability. They could see Owen's back ahead of them, and beyond him the door to the outside of the compound, which he had just reached and was struggling to get open. "It's locked!"

"Times like this what I wouldn't do for a sonic screwdriver." Jack said, with borderline hysterical laughter in his tone. "Goddamn it! Fuck! Bugger!"

"Oh, get out of the WAY." Gwen said, shoving Jack to one side and throwing herself bodily at the door. It shook on its hinges, as Owen brought up his pistol and fired on the still-advancing monster, which was finally back in their line of sight. It had stopped, looked at them and Jack would have sworn it was savouring the opportunity of killing them as it reared up to all ten feet of it's height, looking like some sort of demented grizzly bear, if grizzlies had fur instead of scales and shark-like teeth, which it showed them with a foul-smelling roar. It raised one of it's paws with claws that were ten inches long and prepared to bring it down on Jack's head, who had taken a defensive position to protect the other members of his crew. Gwen and Owen were barreling their shoulders into the door behind him, frequent crashes as Jack raised his gun to the bear-creature's face. Like he told Gwen, it wouldn't actually do anything, but it made _him_ feel safer, more defended, better equipped. The door behind him crashed open, and the large, echoing bang of a sawn-off shotgun echoed through his ears, as the creature that had been rearing at him fell to the ground with a sickening crunch, backwards, down the stairs to the basement levels of the complex. The crunch of bone sounded halfway down, and Jack looked over the railing experimentally.

The creature was pooled at the bottom of the stairs, head bent at an impossible angle, skull half-caved in. It was dead.

Jack looked over his shoulder, panting, to see Ianto holding a rifle to his shoulder, the end smoking slightly as he lowered it. His expression was twisted into one of malice and hate, their protector. Tosh stood at his shoulder, hovering.

"Good shot." Jack said, meaning 'thank you.'

"Easy at this range." Ianto quipped, and they all heard the 'you're welcome.'

Owen, of course, would not settle until he had ruined every possible moment of team bonding that the Torchwood gang had ever had, so it was with no surprise that as he wiped spit off the side of his face with the back of his hand, he also said, "What the Hell is a Sonic Screwdriver?"

"It's a screwdriver that's sonic." Jack had replied quietly, wondering why he had mentioned it earlier. It was probably the fact that Rose was back, he was usually, after all, much better at not making references to the Doctor when his team was around. They all gave him baffled looks.

"Who looks at a screwdriver and decides to make it sonic?" Owen said, almost ad-libitum of what Jack had said himself to the Doctor during the London Blitz.

"A man I knew once." Jack said, as he squared his shoulders and walked past his team, slapping Ianto on the back as he went. "He was a genius, but a little bit nuts. They seem to go hand-in-hand, don't they?"

He unlocked the 4x4 that was parked outside.

Toshiko and Gwen proceeded downstairs to dispose of the body.

* * *

_"I need to find the Doctor._" Whispers of the world in the dark caused him to sit straight up from where he had been absently sitting, one foot up on the TARDIS's controls, Donna safely away in bed for the night. Faint and flinging on the edge of his consciousness, he tried to remember what had caused him to start, what had been so important, but there was nothing there, just the ghost of a feeling, a chill crawling down his spine. It would do no good to dwell on it - the problem still hadn't been fixed, the TARDIS still didn't want to go back, and he'd been thinking, looking for a way to solve the problem, when he knew that she was really in control of their destinations and not him.

The TARDIS always took him to where he was needed most – where he could do the most good, or the most destruction and he'd always wondered about it. He hummed to himself, quietly contemplating as he pressed random buttons on the console, knowing that she wouldn't let him do anything she truly didn't want, but trying all the same to get her to change her mind.

"Women," He said, mostly to himself, "You're all so bloody stubborn."

The TARDIS whirred angrily at him, or at least he had always assumed that when the engines rose up that tiny degree in pitch that she was telling him off for something. He raised his hands in his own defense. "Okay, alright. I'm sorry." He still had the distinct impression that the ship was frowning at him. "Look, if you want me to stop insulting you, you could just take me to Cardiff, twenty-first century like I want you to and we'll all be happy."

The engine's whir changed again. "Okay, except maybe you, but you have to refuel some time." And again. "No, we are refueling there. Can you imagine how Donna would react to any of the other rifts in the universe? I would never live that down in a million years."

A high-pitched whine.

"I know she won't live that long, haven't you ever heard of exaggeration?" He shook his head and placed one hand on the console, the warm heat of the TARDIS that was ever present wrapped around his hand almost comfortingly. "What's there that you don't like? Just tell me that and let me understand why you don't want me to go back. There has to be a reason because there always is."

She remained silent, the pitch of her engines remained completely unchanging.

"Fine, be that way." He said sulkily, "I'll just keep on having to try and override your systems."

The ship rumbled at him and shook, and he sat back down upon the chair in the flight room, looking at it in disdain. He closed his eyes and started to think of possible ways to convince the ship to get him to do what he wanted her to, instead of just merely doing what she wanted.

_Can't you feel it, Doctor?_ The ship asked him, so silent and peaceful that the Doctor didn't notice it, hidden amongst all the possibilities he entertained inside his head. _Don't you remember the feeling?_

He scratched at his scalp absently, like there was an ever-present itch there that wouldn't go away. She only ever spoke to him like this when she knew that he wouldn't remember it. For all he was a Time Lord, even their memories weren't always perfect.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice her, which was the way it always was and always would be. But she had her subtle sway on him, and he found his mind roaming into the realms of possibility

Had it truly been that long for him? Was it even possible? And then with a confused frown: What was that in reference to?

_Don't you remember the feeling?_

* * *

"I told you to stay indoors, Rose Tyler! Not to go wandering around Cardiff like you own the place!"

"I wasn't wandering!" Rose shot back at Jack, glaring and eyeing him up and down, "I was getting a breath of fresh air! It's hell to be cramped up in here all alone!"

"But this place is huge!" Jack protested, waving his arms about the main room of the hub, looking at her in disbelief. "You know you can't go out in case someone recognizes you. You're supposed to be dead!"

"This place is empty." Rose corrected, poking Jack in the chest and glaring at him. "All big and empty with nothing but a stupid dinosaur to keep me company while you run out to the country side to have a jolly good time with your teammates."

"Excuse me, Miss Priss, we nearly died." Owen interjected from the other side of the room.

"I don't believe I was talking to you." Rose snapped at him, and then whirled on Jack again. "It's been four weeks, Jack. Four weeks of being stuck in a ruddy great base under Cardiff which is _miles_ from London, might I remind you, trying to find something that will fill in the time so I don't go stir-crazy."

"Play Tetris!" Jack said, "_Find_ something to do!"

"I did, I went outside." Rose pointed out, turning away from the man, trying to end the conversation. Jack growled and gripped her shoulder, forcibly spinning her around to face him.

"Listen, Rose, you can't go out there!" He said, "If you – "

"All I did was sit on the wall for a little while and remember the smell of un-recycled air." She said. "But if I'm not even allowed to do that, Jack, what does it make me, your prisoner?"

"No, you're not, you never were."

Gwen coughed discreetly. "I thought you told us not to let her leave until we found out how she did it." She said. Jack gaped at her, and Rose stared for a moment, before coming down on the American-sounding Ex-Time Agent like a tonne of well placed bricks. Over certain vital organs.

"You what?" She said, backing him up against the wall. Jack looked almost genuinely terrified of her, and the others were startled to notice the sway this strange young girl had over him. Jack didn't want to hurt her – and it shocked them all because they all had secretly believed that their captain would go to any length to get what he wanted from someone. "You told them to _what?_"

"Rose, we need to know how you did it!" Jack protested, raising his hands in his own defense. "We need to know if it's done any lasting damage to either world and find out if we can fix it."

Rose spun on her heel. "I don't believe this." She said, swiping a hand through her long, blonde hair. She strolled away from Jack, picking up the discarded backpack from her first night in the base, and shoving into it the meager possessions that Jack had managed to find for her. Her hazel eyes glittered with barely contained fury.

"Rose, Rose!" Jack said, stepping after her, ignoring the look that Ianto gave him. She was already moving towards the Hub's door, the gates were already swinging open to accompany her.

"Where will you go?" Owen said, in a cruel tone, and Rose stopped rock still, still facing away from them. "Face it, Sweetheart, you've got nowhere."

"I'll find somewhere." She said quietly, and Jack quelled his disgust at her naïveté – it was probably merely selfish denial more than anything. "Anywhere that's not here. That's not as detached from humanity as you all are!"

Jack was shocked to realize that Rose's shoulders were shaking. "Rose," He said again, quietly, and she turned around before she could stop herself. There was an eon of pain and loneliness in her eyes, something that she hadn't quite managed to cover up.

Owen, who was particularly callous at the best of times, seemed interested in setting new records. "Face it, Sweetheart. You got a backpack and a walking stick but nothing important. No money, no ID, no resume. Even if you could find a place to live, no one would hire you. We're all you got."

Jack could have killed him when he saw the way Rose's face twisted into a horrible expression that he was sure he'd never seen there before. She took another step towards the door. It took Jack by surprise when he saw Gwen's arm reach out to her shoulder, he hadn't realized the woman had moved. Rose had jumped and spun, and Gwen had wrapped her up in a fierce hug. Rose looked startled and like she was about to resist for the barest of moments until she had relaxed into the embrace and gently, oh so very gently returned it.

A singular hiccough echoed through the hub. "I don't want to be alone." Rose whispered.

The silence was supreme, as Jack thought about what those words implied, at what Rose could have possibly been through in that other world to merit that unintentional whisper. He sighed, as Gwen, sweet, human and humane Gwen held Rose a little tighter. "I'm taking her out for coffee." Gwen said, in a voice that dared Jack to argue with her.

The little voice in Jack chose that moment to speak up. _She's changed._ He thought bitterly, thinking on how much he himself had also done so. _I'm not sure if I like it._

* * *

* * *

_ A/n: Whoo. Melodramatic much? Sorry. I can't keep humor up for very long, especially not with the plot I have in mind._

_The way I write Owen I make him out to be such an asshole. Sorry about that, I don't mean to._

_Review? -shakes a tin and puppy-dog-eyes you all- _


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor was not a man prone to giving up, which was a fact that the vast majority of Time and Space was more than grateful for. However, sometimes things had to be... left for a while in order for them to make sense, and Donna had finally convinced him to give up on re-fuelling for the time being for one or two other trips – The woman was going mad from lack of inter-personal contact, and she constantly lamented the fact that she didn't know what the hot celebrity gossip was on Earth.

So the Doctor had given her a side-trip to distract her, and hopefully confuse the TARDIS so he could press an opening and travel to Cardiff after he had calmed both the women down a bit. He realized the instant he had swung open the doors, that coming to this world at this time had been a mistake for three reasons.

The first, and perhaps the easiest to think of was that he was with _Donna_ and as much as Donna was growing used to the ins and outs of the universe and coming to terms with aliens and foreign worlds, she didn't readily lunge into strange things with glee. She was more likely to scream and run the other way, crying for home, than to embrace what he showed her and see the beauty in it. The second reason was that the TARDIS was currently gloating at him in the back of his consciousness, sending little thoughts along the vein of 'I won, take that' at him. The third and possibly most painful reason was the one that he often found easiest to forget, until it slammed him in the face like the TARDIS door.

The beach was glorious. And it was frozen, in the middle of a storm, waves thrashing as towering blocks of ice above him. He swallowed quietly, put on his best cheerful face and swallowed around the lump that appeared in his throat. Donna didn't need to know, the Doctor didn't want to tell her that this was where he had taken Rose just the once what seemed like aeons ago. "Right, Donna! Welcome to the year 3058, To the frozen beaches of – "

"It's beautiful." Donna cut over the top of him, her hand coming up to her chest, looking around at the frozen waves. "But it's dangerous, isn't it? Couldn't they unfreeze at any time?"

"Oh, no chance of that, Donna Noble." The Doctor said, forcing his grin to remain firmly in place as he looked at her, aware of having spoken these words before. "Whole place is at minus 270 degrees celcius – only a few degrees above Absolute Zero."

"In that case, we should be frozen, right?"

"The TARDIS is protecting us." He told her gently, stepping between the icy waves, looking up at the way they glittered in the starlight. He smiled. "As long as we don't go too far, we'll be fine."

There was a melancholy feeling deep in his chest, but it was accompanied by the feeling of soft remembrance that had been instilled in him ever since Martha Jones had shown him that there was reason to live on in the world. She would never be Rose, but the rawness of Rose's departure had become less painful, for Martha's friendship, even if he couldn't be to her what she had wanted him to be.

There were mounds of fine dust-like ice on the ground that had once been foam and spray thrown up by raging waves, and he remembered Rose putting her hands into the stuff, grinning cheekily in the way she always had, with her tongue between her teeth, like she was caught midway between a smile and a laugh. There was the pain and bitter-sweetness in the memory – he didn't share it with Donna.

"Anyway." He said, choking only slightly and fixing his manic grin more firmly into place, "Interesting story as to how this place was created, Donna, Years and years back, this was a thriving world, full of all sorts of marine life and even the start of some basic land-based life forms were learning how to stand up." He walked along the ice. "Then, one day, nothing. Kaput. Gone. A great gust of solar wind reached the planet and stripped it of its protective atmosphere. Like dipping the world into Liquid Nitrogen – except so much colder." He demonstrated what he meant, plucking one of the bits of driftwood off the ground and gently dropping it. Like glass, it shattered.

Donna gulped, pressing closer to him, still looking at the world, but this time her face was a bit less awed and a tad upset. They walked past another wave, this one with a great shadow in it, a creature, frozen and preserved forever. "Let's go back to the TARDIS." Donna said quietly, pulling her jacket around herself a bit tighter.

"I thought you said it's beautiful?" The Doctor said, smiling at her, ever so slightly. His eyes held the glint that meant he was teasing gently, but the instant Donna turned to look at him and he saw her face - he sobered.

"It's so sad, Doctor." She said, quietly, "That everything here had to die to create that beauty. It's melancholy."

He nodded, quietly pleased at his ability to pick the best companions. _Rose had thought that too._ He thought to himself quietly, standing to one side to let Donna back past him. He stared at her back, contemplating her reaction as he followed her back to the TARDIS.

"Are you alright?" He said, as she walked ahead of him, she looked reverent and solemn, like she was stepping on sacred ground.

"It won't ever happen to the Earth, will it?" And the Doctor was sharply reminded why he and the woman were just friends. As much as he trusted Donna, as much as he liked her, she would always keep her link with her home planet above everything else. And he knew one day, eventually, that it would drive her to leave him. He had bigger visions, the interest of more than one little rock (As much as he loved the Earth) at heart, and Donna, even though she tried so hard, was always going to be more concerned about that one little planet, more than anything else.

"No, Donna." He said, quietly, "It won't. The Earth acts like a big magnet to keep the solar winds at bay, and to keep all of it's atmosphere where it belongs. This planet didn't have iron for its core, it had nickel. The magnetic field wasn't anywhere near as strong as it should have been to do anything against that great wind." He sighed. "It was dying long before the wind came – what it really came down to was a mercy-killing."

She gave a lopsided smile over her shoulder and he knew that she hadn't understood the reason why the Earth was protected, but that she was willing to trust him on it.

Martha would already have worked out half the reason and would have asked to know more; Rose didn't ask the question in the first place. He made a face.

* * *

Gwen smiled at the younger woman across from her, wondering if this was what it was like to have a little sister. There was a careful way that Rose held herself, insecure, uncertain and all-too raw that made Gwen wonder how much she had been through and what it would take her to heal. It was partly why she had forcibly removed the girl from the hub, even for all that she really should stay inside the base. Rose was quiet, looking about the small shop with a sense of almost-unease. The waitress (a long-legged, attractive lass) placed two ceramic mugs in front of them, Gwen had coffee, and Rose had strong, sweet tea. Rose gave a half-hearted smile of thanks, directed at the waitress as she cupped her hands around the mug.

Awkward silence followed.

"So." Gwen said, determinedly cheerful, even in the face of the girl in front of her, "Tell me-"

"I'm not telling you how I crossed the rift." Rose said, looking at her darkly before sipping her tea again. Gwen was shocked into silence, her mouth slightly open before she closed it with a click.

She gathered herself again, gave herself a mental shake and smiled once more, looking over the small table. "I wasn't even going to ask about that." She lied, but faltered slightly under the look that Rose gave her. The girl was no fool, and sometimes Gwen thought she acted much older than she looked. Gwen swallowed. "Okay. I was. Worth a shot, right?"

Rose smiled weakly at this, but it was quickly converted into a frown.

"Oh, look. You do have a smile in there, I was beginning to wonder." Gwen grinned at her, tucking her hair behind her ears and taking a sip of her coffee. "You know, you should smile more. It lights up your face. You're even prettier when you smile."

"There's not much to smile about." Rose said quietly, but she looked up at Gwen shortly after, and there was something lingering in her eyes that wasn't there before.

"Let's not talk about the Rift, Rose." Gwen said, feeling more confident. "Tell me how you and Jack met up instead, I've been wondering about that ever since you came to the hub."

Rose looked up at that, her smile returning, still soft and sad, but it was one of memory now. "Hasn't he ever told you about that? I would have thought you would have asked him as soon as I came back."

"We ask," Gwen said honestly, "But he doesn't like to talk about his past very much. Keeps us all in the dark about it really."

Rose nodded, what little smile there was about her face fading. "Then perhaps I shouldn't tell you if he doesn't want me to." She took another sip of her tea, and Gwen frowned.

"I know nothing about him, Rose, because he won't tell me! And you know at least a little more than I do and you won't say anything! It's frustrating knowing nothing about the man you work for, the man you care about!"

Rose opened her mouth to snap, but something flickered in her expression, one of the things that Gwen had said had struck something and the girl closed her eyes and thought. "Okay." She said. "Jack."

"We met during the London Blitz. My partner and I were separated, and I was hanging by a barrage balloon when the incredible happened."

The things that Rose spoke about were nigh-on impossible, and if Gwen hadn't been in her line of work, she would have dismissed some of the claims straight away. Gas mask children, creatures of the abstract, Aliens made of calcium, which exploded on contact with vinegar, vampires that sucked the life right out of a living person's body, the list went on. And that wasn't all – the time periods that Rose spoke about seemed to jump back and forth, with weapons and technologies going from completely ancient to impossibly futuristic – androids (Or at least that's what it sounded like, rose put a slight stress on the first syllable of the word.) and space stations and tales that were so impossible they couldn't be anything but true. The mind it would be to create some of those stories! But it seemed that in her travels, there were always three people, never just two, never just her and Jack – they were always accompanied by a mysterious third person whom Rose always simply referred to as 'my partner'.

"This is all so impossible!" Gwen exclaimed at last, having heard one too many fantastical stories from Rose. Her coffee had long gone cold, and people who had come into the shop after them had long-since left the premises. Gwen merely stared at Rose in a mixture of shock and amazement as her brain processed the details of what she was hearing. "It's almost like you had a time-machine or something, the way you're talking! You step right from one realm of technology to another, without even taking a breath!"

Rose looked away. "I didn't understand how it worked, at first, either. My partner flew the ship; all Jack and I did was follow in his wake, helping him, like we were his side-kicks or something. We were more important than that, I suppose, but most of the time all I did was get in the way, and all Jack did was show off and flirt. Imagine, a girl from the 21st century meeting a man from the 51st in the 20th. It seems unbelievable even to me when I think back on it."

"Sorry, what period of history did you say Jack was from again?"

* * *

"You had no RIGHT!" Back in the hub, and Rose and Jack were fighting again. It seemed to be all they ever did, and most of the team were wondering how the two were even friends, if all of this bickering was all that happened between them. Tosh had busied herself in her computer files, Owen was preparing serums in the morgue, Gwen and Ianto had both made themselves more than scarce. Rose calmly stared Jack down as he stood with his hands on the glass table, fury in his voice and lividity in his eyes. She was seated, elbow propped up on the table, head resting on her hand in near-disdain. "What makes you think that you can freely disclose that sort of information without my say-so?" Jack demanded, growling low in the back of his throat.

Rose blinked at him, refusing to be drawn into the screaming-match she would have gladly given in to, once upon a time. "I'm sorry that you don't consider them enough to tell them your own past, Jack." She said levelly, staring him down. "I was merely telling her of my experiences with Him."

There was no need to say who 'he' was, it was an unspoken agreement between the pair not to mention his name, though neither was quite sure why. It just seemed wrong, like the budding tension that was growing between them as their personalities clashed on more and more levels. Rose was different, Jack was too. The easy acceptance of what seemed so long ago was gone. "Which coincidentally coincided with the time I was with you." Jack's tone was dry, disbelieving, wrong.

"Yes, as it happened." Rose answered calmly, without missing a beat. In another time it would have made him smile, but it's too much like a slap in the face with his current state of emotions, Rose's lack of cheery confidence destroying his perception of the moment. He's furious, she's far too calm. She has been ever since she arrived, minus the mild breakdown she had after he had found her outside.

"You had no right." He said again, growling and feeling deeply betrayed, like she'd spoken a dark secret, rather than relaying their shared past. It wasn't as if Rose knew very much about him, only what he'd told her which was nearly as little as he'd told the other members of his team. A few anecdotes, some harmless flirting, his time with her seemed so long ago, and so painfully pointless, hundreds of years and a parallel universe which Rose wouldn't speak of seemingly far too large a gap to cross. "That was my history as much as yours. And Him! Do you think He would have wanted you to talk about it so freely? In Torchwood of all places?"

"I didn't mention Him by name." Rose reasoned.

Jack wasn't quite sure why he was angry. Rose knew all too well. After a moment, she decided to get on with the inevitable, to move the argument to the next stage. This is one part of his dynamic that she's always understood, that she's watched the Doctor exploit on more than one occasion. She sighed. "I want to know, Jack, Why didn't she know about me? Why didn't any of them know about me?" Her calm indifference was getting to him, she saw it in the way he started fidgeting even through his anger.

She knew why. She wasn't the Rose that he remembered, bright, courageous and naieve, before she walked through Hell and back in the form of an alternate universe where she was forced to watch her family and friends slaughtered, one by one, for simply loving her. Four stones in a row, she wasn't the same girl.

Jack wasn't the same man. He doesn't know how to deal with people, he never did. He knows how to flirt, he knows how to weave words, but he's stumped when he comes up against someone who knows all his tricks and meets his anger with calm. It was why the Doctor had impressed him so, someone so old and wise and immune.

It made him angrier, she saw it, she watched it happen. He didn't want this Rose. He wanted the old Rose, the Rose who laughed at his jokes and responded to his flirting with her own. The one he never spoke about in all the years they were separated.

"Tell me why, Jack."

"You LEFT ME!" He shouted, bitter heartache lining his voice. "You left me there, and you didn't come back!"

The hub outside fell suspiciously quiet and Jack reigned in his temper and volume. Rose stared at him, her gaze never changing, blinking very slowly and a little too often.

"What was I supposed to do, Rose? Wait for you? I did. I waited. A hundred and twenty years and I found out that you two went off to have your own life without me. That you never looked back. Him, I can understand. He even explained it to me, but you! You and I were friends! I thought best friends! I thought you would have at least asked him to look!"

The anger spiked in her gut, and she knew some of it showed on her face before she could tuck it away again. "I did ask him to look." She said. "I asked him to go back."

"Why didn't you ask him more often? Why didn't you come?" The anger in his voice was so potent it could have been bottled. "I loved you! I loved him! And neither of you thought to look past yourselves and come and get me! How do you think that made me feel?"

She looked at him, and a wave of sickening _wrong_ washed off him, catching her by surprise and making her recoil slightly. The emotions were fever-pitched, though he was showing his more readily.

"You didn't want me." She said quietly, "You wanted him."

And there was his dark secret, laid out on the table in front of them both. The one he'd mentioned to his crew, if not by name than by anecdote, always accidentally leaving her out, never quite remembering that there had been someone else there. "I loved you both." But he'd only _wanted_ the Doctor.

Like she had wanted him, but had only loved the Doctor. They were both but the other's distraction.

Years fled and distance failed as they looked at each other, the understanding written on both their faces. Jack finally sat down, his hands coming to his face, a derisive snort echoing from behind them.

"We're barmy."

Rose said nothing, stood, came around the table and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He was still her Jack. She was still his Rose.

Gwen found them talking softly later, if a little tersely, and some of the distance between them seemed to have been shed. Rose had a pretty smile, when she wanted.

* * *

_A/n: __Urgh__. This is turning out far too __waffly__. I need to get to the down and dirty. __Will do so next chapter._

_Review?__ –__puppy__ eyes-_


	4. Chapter 4

Weeks passed and life settled into routine, as much as Jack had thought it wouldn't happen. Toshiko and Ianto had worked together to form an identification for Rose to live with – modifying little details of who she was, but not the large picture. Rose Tyler was a common name after all. Every day, she would go to her job at one of the local shops (oh how she had complained, but Jack wasn't going to risk her in a position in Torchwood) And would come back to the hub, late in the afternoon to sleep, eat and rest for the next day. It kept her distracted, and kept Jack from worrying about her too much.

Rose didn't smile anymore and that had scared him more than anything.

It was Owen who had suggested that they find her an apartment away from the hub, and it was Gwen who had squashed the idea. The Welsh woman was more than taken with Rose, enjoyed talking to her and trying to help, and had found more than one excuse to ensure that Rose was not alone. This worked out well for Jack on more than just the obvious level – Rose had company which was what she wanted, Gwen had a mission, Owen was put in his place, and Rose, most importantly, was becoming a recognized fixture in the hub.

Jack didn't fool himself for a second into thinking that Rose was a permanent fixture, as much as he would have liked to keep his old friend in his sights, where he could protect her. Jack knew that it was only a matter of time until the Doctor returned to Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS, and without fail, he would take Rose with him. He had even tried to call the Doctor, a number of times, but each time the call hadn't gotten through – the message about 'this phone is currently switched off or out of range' had to be lying, the Doctor had Martha's... Superphone, Jack believed the word was. He frowned in frustration, and at not knowing what it meant, because it seemed that the only time Jack couldn't get in touch with the Time Lord was when something important had happened.

Rose, in the meantime, had settled. Jack had set up a camp-bed for her in the meeting-room, something which could be folded away when it wasn't being used, unobtrusive, but strangely unruffled when he looked at it in the morning. She smiled and said she made it when confronted, but she had never been that good a liar, and Jack slept in the hub too. He heard her moving around at night.

And so it was the routine. Ianto would arrive in the morning and take Rose off to her job before returning so they could get into the swing of things, and Rose would put on her name badge and her best fake smile and attend to customers, whilst trying not to think of other worlds and long-past times. If ever anyone noticed a sad look in her eyes they didn't mention it because she wasn't their problem, just a simple shop girl and nothing more.

* * *

The shop was relatively quiet and Rose had finished restocking the tables piled high with shirts when it happened. She tucked some hair behind her ear and was about to start on her next task when a chillingly familiar voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Hello, Tyler." Rose tried not to flinch, even as an anticipatory shiver ran up her spine. She stood rock-still, afraid to turn around, because she could deal with his voice and even his touch (a hand had reached out and was slowly rubbing her shoulder with its thumb.) but his face was the one thing she had never been able to face.

Quelling the butterflies in her stomach, and recovering from the startle he had given her, she frowned. "So you followed me, then." She said, sounding calmer than she felt. She looked around to see if there was another shop-hand within sight, but he was always clever, and he had chosen a moment when the others were on their breaks and she was alone on the floor. (No one to save her, and no one to stop her.)

"I'd follow you to the end of the Earth, Tyler. You should know that." He replied in a low purr that appealed to her heart more than her sensibilities. She wasn't buying it, she knew his games.

"I've been to the end of the Earth." Rose said, trying to sound cocky and confident, even smiling weakly though he couldn't see it. "You'd like it."

"I bet I would." He laughed, deep in his throat and it went through her like a knife through butter. She felt him move behind her, found her back pressed up against his slightly-skinny chest, felt beating through the fabric between them (Her own heart was clamouring like a drum in her chest, and she knew he could feel it, his senses were much better than hers.) There was hot breath at her ear. "I love things like that, after all. End of the world, Rose, means end of consequence."

"It is the consequence." She replied, mind wanting to pull away, but body melting into the familiar embrace. "You should have stayed in that parallel world."

"Should have, but didn't." He replied. "I'll follow you anywhere. I need you."

She choked. "You should have thought of that before you killed them."

She was pushed away from him and had to catch herself on the edge of the table, refusing to look around at him like he wanted. He growled bitterly. "Jack would have died anyway, Tyler. DNA is not supposed to mix across world boundaries. He would not have lived past eight."

"You didn't have to kill him!" Rose demanded, breathing hard through her nose.

"No, I didn't." She heard the smirk that was bound to be upon his face.

"He was just a little boy, scared and running! And you killed him to prove a point!"

"Yes, I did. Blimey, Tyler, even for a human you're remarkably good at pointing out the obvious." She flinched, tensing as his hand traced patterns on her back. "And now you've led me to this delightful little world where everyone else doesn't exist! They've already gone – no consequences." He laughed. "So you can play family with those people in that base, but remember, Rose Tyler, get any closer to them than you are now, and I will kill them."

"Touch them and I'll stop you." She said.

"You'll try." He replied. "You'll also fail."

She couldn't resist it anymore, she spun around to face him, but he had been moving as he was talking, and she saw only the flash of brown pants at the door before he was gone completely. "Do-"

"Rose!" Jack barreled into the room, from the staff entry, gun cocked and ready to blaze, the other members of Torchwood streaming in behind him.

"The Rift readings in here are off the charts!" Toshiko said, startled as she consulted her small, handheld computer. "There's been some major activity here, Jack!"

Rose froze, her head tuning out to the rushing of the Torchwood team behind her, her hand half-reaching for the door, mouth still open around a half-formed word. Jack was shouting at her, but she couldn't make out what he was saying, Gwen came up behind her and started pulling her away from the table, wrapping a deceptively-strong arm about her shoulders. She was saying something at Jack, Rose didn't know or care what it was. Rose lowered her hand slowly, staring at the still-open shop door, blinking slowly.

"-you see, Rose? What was it! Rose. Rose! _Rose_!"

_ROSE!_

Her head snapped up, and the details of the room came flooding back to her all at once, the racks of clothing in front of her burnt in bright, surreal colours, Owen was shouting, Toshiko was firing off readings from her computer, and Jack was looking over at her, where she was pressed against Gwen's side. Ianto was picking up the shirts that had slipped from the table where she had gripped it earlier.

"...I have a headache." She said softly, realizing it was true bare moments after she had spoken. The sigh of relief came from five directions, which surprised her slightly, she hadn't realized Owen cared.

Jack stepped into her line of vision. "What did you see?" He asked, and the concern in his face shocked her. She recoiled slightly, overpowered by a wave of _wrong_ that ensnared her senses, her headache lowering her defenses. She swallowed around the lump in her throat, forced her tense muscles to relax and took two deep breaths. "what did you _see_?" Jack repeated forcibly.

"A ghost." Rose said, bringing a cool hand up to her forehead. "I saw a ghost."

The Torchwood team started arguing amongst themselves about what it could have been, none of them thinking to question Rose further, though Rose thought Gwen had more than a hand in that, for on occasion she was squeezed tighter as she tuned out to the people around her.

She wasn't certain, but she thought she could hear singing.

* * *

The mug of tea seemingly appeared out of no-where in front of the Doctor's nose. He wouldn't admit it took him by surprise, but if he had been a person with less composure, he just might have jumped. Instead, however, he grinned, and reached up to take it, putting his sonic screwdriver in his mouth before he did so. "Da, Dompha" He mumbled around it, and she rolled her eyes at him as he poked his head out of the hole in the grating. He swung out of the hole, putting the screwdriver in his pocket when he had a free hand and cradling the mug.

"Still haven't figured it out, I take it?"

"I'm working on it!' He said, sounding mildly put out. He didn't like the insinuation that he wasn't clever enough to solve a problem – he was in the intermediary steps! The solution was only a few more steps away!

Donna merely smirked at him in that infuriating way she had, brushing down the smart business suit she was wearing and flicking her ginger hair over her shoulder. The Doctor stomped on a small flare of jealousy. Donna laughed at whatever expression had flitted across his face and took a sip of her own mug of tea, sitting down on the singular chair in the TARDIS. "Your hair is doing this." She gestured that it was sticking out in all directions.

"Static electricity, Donna. It's why I wear rubber soles." He laughed, then sobered. "Thing is, I can't work it out. She's perfectly fine down there, no blockages or misplaced wires, it's like she, herself simply doesn't want to go to Cardiff."

The engine suddenly gave a high-pitched, almost excited whine.

"What? It's moving! Doctor, why is it moving?"

"Why should I know? The TARDIS does what it wants most of the time!"

_It is time!_ A voice giggled in both of their heads, one that the Doctor dimly recognized as the TARDIS – it sounded slightly like Rose, but aeons old and younger than milliseconds all at once. _You are needed!_

Then the ship gave a sickening lurch that threw Donna and the Doctor across the room. The Doctor's head slammed into one of the coral structures in the wall and knew no more.

* * *

_A/n: So the bad guy has been introduced._

_ And I have given you enough clues to work out who it is. Or at least I THINK I have, it'll be fun seeing who you all think it will be._

_Review? -puppydog eyes and shakes a little tin- _


	5. Chapter 5

"_You never did tell me – Why Mickey?"_

_Rose shifted and shrugged, resting her head more comfortably on his shoulder, feeling his hand in her hair, gently stroking and soothing. There were mascara trails down her cheeks from where she had been crying, her blush was running and she had made his shoulder slightly damp (And was that a makeup smudge? Oops). He hadn't complained. _

"_Mickey was nice, you know. Wasn't an idiot, well, some of the time." He laughed at that, just a small little snicker which he stifled quickly out of respect. "Made a good cuppa when he washed the mugs."_

_He scratched at her scalp, then moved his hand to draw her closer so that the sides of their bodies were touching. He leaned his head against the top of hers, and she fought off fresh tears that threatened to fall. "I know you, Rose Tyler." He said. (She loved it when he did that, used her full name like it was the most important title she carried, that there was nothing better to be than herself) "You don't just do nice and good tea."_

_She shrugged into his shoulder. "He was brave too." She pointed out, and that brought a fresh wave of tears at the prospect of him choosing to leave her, choosing to go to another world and save it, rather than stay and protect her and her mum and (heaven forbid) the man next to her. "Not at first, but he grew into it."_

"…" _She knew he was expecting more, his silence said as much, but she also knew if she chose not to acknowledge him he wouldn't press her. It made the difference enough for her to continue talking._

"_I suppose-" she said, and paused, resting her hand against his chest, feeling the contrast between the smooth silk of his tie and the harsher cotton of his shirt. "- I suppose I just settled. He was the nicest thing I'd come across in a while and he was good to me."_

_He nodded, she could feel it in the way his nose moved against her scalp, and tried to deny the little thrill of pleasure it gave her, the way her heart beat a little faster. "Never just settle, Rose Tyler." He said, bringing his hand off her shoulder and back to her hair, "You deserve so much more than second best."_

_She'd nodded against his shoulder and had cried fresh tears, making the wet patch on his shoulder spread even more, but she'd taken his words to heart._

* * *

Rose returned to consciousness excruciatingly slowly. There was a bubble of a groan pressing against her throat, trying to get out, as memories of her dreams trickled from her like water through her cupped hands. She dragged herself into a sitting position and squinted her eyes open, a combination of old mascara and sleep pressing her eyelids together and making it difficult to focus on anything. She brought her right hand up to rub at them, and tried to open them again, this time to more effect.

The harsh light of the room was almost blinding, but as she got used to it, she took in her surroundings with the attention to detail that working for Torchwood (Her Torchwood, not Jacks'.) had given her. She 

was in a plain room, with a stark, white ceiling, off white floors and putrid yellow linoleum which was littered with the scuffmarks of many shoes, but otherwise far too clean. The air smelt sterile, but with the underlying bitter tang of disease and sickness that could never be quite hidden. By her bedside, machines made small noises and whirs, their monitors flashing various readings. It didn't take Rose long to figure out where she was – a hospital. The questions on her mind were 'which one?' and 'why?'

There was an IV itching at her wrist, and absently she scratched at the white bandage strapped over it, before gently pinching her skin and pulling it out with a slight wince. There were no other beds in the small room, and Rose wondered why she would be put into a private ward when nothing really justified it – unless Jack had somehow arranged it. She doubted this – Jack would have made Owen see to her injuries, rather than trust someone he deemed less 'experienced' with her care.

So, not Jack then.

She frowned, puzzled. The last thing she remembered before waking up was being at her job, closing up the shop for the night and doing a quick tidy-up before she left. She had had a headache, a terrible one, and Shareen (Not her friend -she could imagine the surprise and scandal that would cause-- but merely someone with the same name) had smiled at her, offering a paracetamol which she had gratefully accepted. She had poured herself a cup of water from the cooler in the staff room and had taken the small pill. She had proceeded out of the building and had headed back towards the hub by way of a public park, where she sat on a bench for a few minutes to take in the scenery.

And then she had woken up an unknown quantity of time later.

Rose let her torso fall back down to the bed, head thunking against the uncomfortably thin pillow. She felt weak all over, shaky, and like she had a slight head-cold, but was in the healing stages. "I'd kill someone for a clock." She said, mostly to herself.

"I wouldn't go that far." Someone replied as the door to her ward creaked shut.

Rose started upright, and instantly regretted it as the pain that spiked through her skull sent her ungracefully back onto her back. She groaned in what could hardly be called a dignified manner as she turned her head in the direction of the door.

The dark skinned woman who had entered the ward placed her hand above her mouth as if to hide a smile as she approached the bed upon which Rose lay. "Might maim someone for a watch, though." And dropping her hand, she tapped at her own and said with a smile, "It's 2 in the afternoon, Monday the 23rd and you've been unconscious for three days."

And all Rose could reply with was "Damn, I've missed the weekend."

This surprised the woman in the lab coat into open laughter before she reached out with a long, slender-fingered hand and smiled brightly at Rose. "It's good to see you've got a sense of humour." She said, "I'm Doctor Martha Jones, transferred from another hospital to work with a case downstairs, but they've got me working other patients as well to cover someone's holiday plans."

Rose took the doctor's hand in her own, smiling at her equally brightly, "Yeah, well, you know people," she said, "Always ready to take a chance at opportunity." They shook hands.

Doctor Jones flashed a bright smile at her, and checked her chart thoroughly before looking with distaste at the fact that Rose had removed her own IV line. "You shouldn't have done that without a doctor's permission." She told Rose firmly, picking up the needle of the line and studying it. "You don't really need it now that you're awake, but you didn't know that."

Rose felt her face sour. She didn't reply, merely looked at the far wall to hide her expression. She actually had known that, but she couldn't tell this doctor that without coming across a little bit pig-headed and more than a little bit arrogant.

Doctor Jones smiled. "Hey, where's that sense of humour gone?" She joked, stepping away from the bed and returning Roses' medical chart to the base of her bed. When Rose still failed to respond, she sighed. "You're in for anaphylactic shock – though you should be fine now that you've actually regained consciousness. Whatever caused the fit and resulting low-level coma has been purged from your system." Her tone was clinical and Rose returned her attention to the doctor, concentrating on what she said.

"Do you know what caused it?" She asked, "I haven't been allergic to anything before."

The doctor looked mildly confused that Rose knew what anaphylactic was, and Rose had to squash some annoyance when she realised what it must look like for the woman. A young woman coming to hospital from a shop on a high-street, with her roots showing and her makeup on, it would have definitely looked like she was uneducated. Rose squashed a snort at just how wrong that assumption was.

"We're not sure. There were traces of apitoxin in your bloodstream which indicated that you had been-"

"Stung by a bee." Rose cut her off. "I was, that morning before work, but I'm not allergic to bees, and the time differentials shouldn't have added up."

Doctor Jones looked suitably impressed this time. "Sorry if this sounds rude, but why are you working in a _shop_?"

"No 'A' levels." Rose responded bluntly.

"…Oh." Doctor Jones seemed to shake herself out of whatever she was thinking. She frowned for a moment. "I've got a bit of housecleaning to do before we can discharge you – your workmates could only supply us with a first name and we couldn't get into contact with your manager. So, Miss Rose, would you mind filling in a few missing details for us?" The doctor in front of her presented her with forms and a pen, and with a suppressed groan, Rose set to work, the other woman in the room hovering over her shoulder on the pretence of watching the machines, but really just being a bit of a busy-body. (Not that Rose minded – she would have done the same thing in the womans' position.) "Rose Tyler, huh?" The woman said eventually.

"'S what I wrote down." Rose replied with a quick grin at the woman, before going back to what she was doing. She couldn't help it, but a part of her was slowly warming to this doctor. "Why so interested?"

"I had a friend who had a friend by that name." The doctor told her. And when Rose raised her eyebrows expectantly, she continued with, "He was over the moon about her, but I never even got to meet her."

"Oh, shame!" Rose replied with a grin. "But it is a common name." She pointed out, "Lots of people have it."

She kept going with the paperwork, and kept up the small talk with Doctor Jones while she did so. She found out that the young woman was very talkative and open, and was told (amongst other things) that that the woman keeping her company had a large, loud family (who were very annoying, but she loved dearly) and a boyfriend of half a year (whom she loved dearly, but was very annoying.) It took nearly an hour for Rose to finish all of the sheets in front of her, so it was with a satisfied and happy smile that she handed back the files when she was finished. Martha (When she had gone from Doctor Jones to Martha, Rose wasn't quite sure but it had happened at some point.) rewarded her with an empathic smile. Martha took the files, folding the clipboard away under her arm. "Thanks very much. We'll get into contact with your next of kin as soon as possible."

"Don't have one." Rose chirruped. "But thanks for the sentiment."

The young doctor smiled uncertainly at her, and moved towards the door, but as she reached it, she paused for a moment and looked back over her shoulder. "That friend of mine. I called him the Doctor."

Rose froze, and felt a small thrill crawl up her spine, and met Martha's face with a fake smile. "Really? Sure you'd meet a lot of those with your job, wouldn't you?" Her smile grew even more fixed when Martha didn't move on. "What was his name?" She asked.

Martha seemed to wilt, and put her hand on the doorknob to let herself out of the room. She shrugged. "It's not important, I suppose." She said.

She left the room, and left a very unsettled Rose in her wake.

* * *

"Has anyone found any trace of her yet?"

Gwens' mouth pressed into a thin line as she heard the panicked tone that lined Jack's voice when it came over the communicator. "Nothing yet, sorry Jack." She said, tucking her hair behind her ear and turning her attention back to her computer monitor. She initiated another search through the Torchwood information banks and took a sip of her coffee. "There hasn't been an admittance of a single Rose Tyler through any of the government institutions." She heard Jack's groan of frustration before it had a chance for form. "But that's a good thing, Jack. It means she hasn't been arrested or admitted into hospital."

"That we know of." Jack pointed out.

"I'm not finding anything either." Tosh said, mostly to diffuse the building fight before it started.

"Blimey!" Said Owen, his voice coming in clear over the link, "How can you hide from Torchwood in Cardiff? That should be impossible!"

"This is Rose Tyler." Jack responded dryly. "She makes a habit out of doing the impossible."

Gwen bit back her retort to that, focusing instead on the information appearing on the screen in front of her.

They had been looking for Rose near on three days now, and hadn't found a single trace of her anywhere in the entirety of Cardiff. Jack was taking it badly – he had gone from mildly concerned, through to full-fledged, badly contained panic in the space of those 72 hours. He was currently out on the streets in his SUV, while Owen and Ianto were out on foot, asking around at pubs, clubs and shops to see if anyone had seen someone matching Roses' description. Jack had covered the bases (That the weekend hadn't) over at Roses' job – she had come down with a nasty 'flu and would be away for a week or two. The manager had seemed surprised but understanding, and had said "I know she had a headache when I last saw her, I hope she gets better."

"Hold on!" Toshiko's voice sliced through Gwen's musing. Gwen looked over to see that Tosh was frowning and had gone quite pale. "Jack," She said, and then swallowed, before looking back at the screen, "I don't want to alarm you, but the rift has just gone insane with activity."

"Fill me in on the details, Tosh."

"There have been five consecutive spikes within the past minute, all within a one mile vicinity of Saint David's Hospital."

Owen swore over the connection. "Five! There have never been five spikes that close together in that short a time frame before. Whoever your girl is, Jack, I think you'll agree that she can wait."

Jack sounded anxious as he replied. "I agree, Though I don't want to say it. Owen, Ianto, head over to the hospital, I'll try and pick you up on the way. Tosh, keep monitoring the Rift, see if any more spikes happen and alert us at once if they do. Gwen-"

At that moment, Gwen's computer let off a loud beep and a message flashed on the screen. "Jack," Gwen said, her blood running cold, "The records for Saint David's hospital have just been updated for the day."

"What is it, Gwen?"

"Rose is there."

* * *

_A/n: Sorry it took me so long to get this out, Uni kinda came up and kicked me in the butt. That and I also just got a playstation 3 – have been playing that while the novelty hasn't worn off. _

_Anyway. Next chapter is half written, so it shouldn't take so long to get it out._

_Leave a little review? –shakes her little tin can-_


	6. Chapter 6

When Rose awoke again, it was late into the night and darkness had settled all around her small, private ward. She could glimpse the stars through her window and wondered, briefly, at what had awoken her.

It was then that she heard it, singing, soft sweet and gentle with just a touch of unerathliness to its quality. It sounded familiar, like a dream forgotten upon waking, and the tune rolled through her mind like a song from childhood, the words fogged with years passed. It drifted on the edge of her consciousness, flitting in and out of her waking mind, but there and always present and heartbreakingly familiar.

She sat up gingerly and tested the movements of her arms and legs, feeling much better after having rested, even for as short a while as she had. Her head was no longer fogged with the aftereffects of whatever serum she had been given to stop her shock, though the back of her mouth tasted sour, like stomach juices and blood. She drew the hospital sheet off her legs and sat up with the intention of hunting down a water-cooler to wash the taste away, but the song in her mind swelled positively, and she changed her initial goal almost immediately to figuring out what it meant.

"What better way to find out than to go to the source." She said quietly to herself, and in a moment of what she considered insane daring, she slipped out of the bed and walked towards the door. The music grew louder when she placed her hand on the doorknob, twisting it and pressing gently against the door to open it.

To her immense relief, the door swung open easily and she stepped out into the hall. When she turned to the left to face one end of the long corridor, the music dipped in volume, when she turned right, it swelled pleasingly, the melody growing slightly less melancholy.

"So that's how this is going to work, is it?" She said to the empty hall, "Hot versus cold?" She snickered at her own joke, considered the fact that she was going insane for talking to herself and then realized that she was quite happily following a strange song that was possibly only in her mind.

Uncomfortably aware that her flimsy gown did nothing to cover her exposed back and undies that had seen better days, she made her way barefooted down the corridor, after the beautiful song that was swelling in her mind. She resolved to change them as soon as possible, and the singing in her head grew slightly petulant as if annoyed that she was sharing.

"Oh, so not only are you projecting into my mind, whatever you are, but you can also read my thoughts?" The music let out an affirmative trill. "Can you speak to me, then and make this easier?" The resulting dischord of notes made her assume a negative response. She continued her progress through the dark hospital corridors, listening to the changes of music that lead her. The linoleum was cold against her bare feet and it served to heighten her awareness within the darkness. It was then she noticed the golden tendrils of light flickering at the edge of her vision. They were beautiful and dancing, and as she passed an open ward door, one of them flickered and died, as a monotone sounded long and constant, in place of what was a steady beat moments ago.

She tried not to think of it as she kept walking forward.

* * *

"For the last time, Martha, I am _not_ concussed!" The annoyed growl that greeted Donna on her way back into the private ward caused her to nearly drop the three Styrofoam cups she was carrying from amusement. "Time Lords do not _get_ concussed! It is simply not part of our biology! _And would you please stop shining that light in my eyes!_"

This was accompanied by the Doctor batting angrily at the pen light that Martha was determinedly shining into his pupils. His outburst was met with a lightning quick response from the woman above him. "Doctor," She said, very calmly, and for the 'n'th time, " If you weren't concussed, your pupils would dilate properly."

The Doctor let out a piteous whine and winced away from the torch light when Martha brought it back up to his face once more. And even though he could hardly argue with the evidence that Martha presented to him, he looked inclined to try. Donna frowned, she wouldn't have any of that.

"Tea." She said forcefully, and the Doctor recoiled slightly from the offered mug, growling at her in a bad temper. "I should call you 'junior'." Donna told him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He demanded, angrily.

"Exactly what it sounds like." Donna replied, pushing the cup towards him once more. He took it with a scowl, extending a bandaged hand out towards her, wincing only slightly at the pull the movement produced on his burns. This seemed to remind the alien of something.

"And that's the _other_ thing!" The irate Time Lord said with an indignant flourish, "Why didn't you just let me heal these damn scalds in the TARDIS medical bay instead of dragging me here?"

Donna and Martha had preprepared their answer for this particular question.

"Because you were unconscious," Donna began reasonably, moving to sit down on the plastic chair beside him, sipping at her cup of tea.

"And concussed." Martha added with a wicked smile as she sat on the edge of the bed. The Doctor twitched and opened his mouth, probably to give another impatient explanation of how he was (empathically) _not_ concussed and that it was rubbish to assume that he was. Donna beat him to the punch before he could say anything, however.

"And the longer you leave burns, the worse they get."

"And Donna could hardly be expected to know how to use all that alien medical equipment in your med-bay, Doctor." Martha said brightly, "In fact, I'd be hard pressed to know what most of that stuff does, and I'm a certified doctor."

The Doctor mumbled something that sounded like _Well, I'm _the_ Doctor, so there._ But Donna and Martha both ignored him in favour of their two-person spiel.

"And there was a hospital just across the road from where the TARDIS parked herself." Donna added to the list of reasons.

Martha continued with "Where a UNIT medical officer is stationed at all times in case there is an unexpected alien admittance."

"And now," Donna finished triumphantly, "You're here, and it would be weird for Martha to discharge you without you being fully healed."

The two girls looked at each other and beamed.

"You rehearsed that." The skulking Time Lord said irritably.

They didn't bother to dignify him with an answer. Donna drained the rest of her tea with a satisfied smile. Martha, for her part, merely clapped her hand against the Time Lord's knee, under the blankets, causing him to glare at her. "You're like a little kid who can't play." She commented, summing up Donnas' own feelings on the matter rather perfectly. She lobbed her empty cup over the Doctor's head and into the bin in the far corner of the room, her aim perfect. "Honestly, I don't know what I ever saw in you."

"I agree." Donna smiled.

"Oi!"

Martha smiled and kissed the man on his forehead soothingly. He glared at her from under his hair, which was falling down into his eyes because he wasn't allowed to scratch at it or run his fingers through it. Martha smiled and stood, straightening the sheets where she'd made them rumpled by sitting. "Hate to love and leave you both, but I have other patients to see to tonight."

"I thought UNIT only saw to the alien ones?" The Doctor said, suddenly curious, straightening up in the bed.

"We're not sure about this one." Martha said, with the air of revealing a big secret. "She went into anaphylactic shock, but the only thing we can link it to is a bee sting that was at least 10 hours old. The apitoxin from that and some strong traces of paracetamol were the only unexpected substances we found in her bloodstream." She grinned at them both. "I'm not supposed to be telling you this, doctor-patient confidentiality and all that, but I trust you two not to tell anyone."

The Doctor frowned thoughtfully. "A bee sting and paracetamol... that was it?"

"Yes, Doctor." Martha said, very patiently, "That was it. And now, if you don't mind, I have to be off. Just think, I'm kind enough to leave you with something for your brain to pick at."

"Martha, what am I allergic to?"

Martha paused with consideration written all over her face. Donna felt slightly put out because she didn't quite understand what was going on, and no one was explaining it to her.

"You're saying that it's the-"

"Could be." The Doctor said. "Well, technically speaking Time Lords are allergic to paracetamol, not aliens in general, but if you think she's not quite human, it's probably best to take it into consideration. Check her blood for anomalies as well. You might pick up something there."

Martha frowned at him.

The Doctor reached up a hand to scratch at his hairline, and Donna slapped it away irritably. "Don't leave me alone with him!" She begged Martha as the other woman made towards the door.

"Oi!"

"Don't kill him before the end of my shift, Donna, it'd reflect badly upon me back at headquarters."

"Oi! Both of you!"

* * *

The music was swelling in tempo, getting faster and louder by degrees as Rose stared at the door in front of her with something that was almost trepidation. There was unease settling in her stomach now, but the music kept drawing her in, its familiarity ensnaring her senses with an ease long-practised. She reached out gingerly for the door handle, but the door opened before her hand had come anywhere near it, swinging inwards silently of its own accord.

The room that was revealed was some sort of meeting hall, chairs arranged in small circles of eight to ten on the linoleum, the fluorescent lights above switched off, except for a scant few, barely enough to light her way around the obstacle course of plastic. There was a mirror on the left wall which stretched for the whole extent of the room, a bar running along it, like at a dance studio. Rose reasoned that this was a rehabilitation room, converted into a gathering hall sometime during the day and not quite packed up yet. What percentage of the room that was not taken up by the mirror or the chairs was empty, and there was something wholly spooky about the entire situation. Rose considered, for a moment, going back to bed but then the music swelled in her mind and dragged her deeper into the empty hall.

The golden light that had been coming from the wards was strongest in here, the tendrils that she could only see from the corner of her eyes before now shone almost corporeal, wrapping around past her and flickering through chair legs towards a large empty space in the centre of the room, where they wrapped and grew into a large golden ball which undulated slightly as if it were breathing.

It was from this ball that the music rang, gentle and soft to wrap around her like a blanket. It swelled positively as Rose stepped towards the sphere of light, the humming ringing in her ears.

"What are you?"she asked the ball, feeling rather silly as she said it.

The ball shifted and twisted into a new shape, almost in response to what she had asked, taking on the form of a large shaggy dog, with a stubbed snout and big paws at the end of its slender legs. _I am your protection._ A voice sung in her mind, sounding at the same time both impossibly old and younger than a moment. It hummed, strong and female and painfully familiar, though Rose didn't quite recognise where she had heard the sound before. _I am born in every moment, fresh and new, and yet I have existed from the dawn of time, and will remain until its end. I can pinpoint the moment of my creation, lost amongst the eons and universes, and I draw you where you need to be. I exist both only in the moment and forever, timeless and time itself._ The wolf sat back on its haunches, looking at her with eyes that glowed a burnt yellow that was only slightly different than the colour of its body. _I exist for your protection, and come from one much greater than myself, but whom I will eventually embrace and become._

"You're not making any sense." Rose told the creature bluntly.

_Child, insolence! I state the answer to your question!_

The voice whined in an almost infantile manner, and Rose raised her eyebrows at it. "Alright." She said, as if it's 'scolding' had had the intended effect, "I'm sorry. Continue with your great wisdom."

The voice seemed unfamiliar with the concept of sarcasm. _I am time and I am space, Rose Tyler, and I exist solely for you._

Rose stepped forward towards the creature, the music in her mind pressing her forwards, and it seemed that she couldn't control the steady plod of her feet towards the golden beast. If she had to choose a word to describe it, she would choose 'warmth' because it was the only word she could think of. It wasn't threatening her, even the controlling of her movements seemed only intended to guide her, but Rose was aware that if it was in her head, this could easily be hiding a more malicious intent, warping her every feeling and emotion. The music seemed to scoff at the very thought.

The dog stood, and plodded towards her, pausing only slightly to sit and scratch at one of its ears, with a hind paw in a strange imitation of a canine mannerism. Rose realised this was intended to make her more at ease, and she smiled at the creature to show that it had been acknowledged, bu treated as nothing more than a ploy.

"What do you mean my protection?" Rose asked the creature when it stopped moving, barely feet away from her.

_Dark times come, Rose Tyler. Your enemy is here and he brings with him savage beasts that hunt for you._

"My enemy?" Rose wondered aloud, coming towards the creature and squatting in front of it so she could meet its shaggy doggy eyes. Realization hit her. "You mean – "

_Yes. The murderer. The broken man. _The dog hung its head almost sadly. _The one who has no purpose so seeks to take that of another. His equal, his identical. Let me protect you._

Roses' hand reached out of its own accord, towards the dog's snout. It seemed... right, though she would be the first to admit that that was an odd way of describing it, it felt like the only thing that mattered.

"_DON'T TOUCH IT!_" The call came from the open doorway and served to snap Rose out of her reverie. Her hand flew back as she realized what she had been just about to do, her breath coming in ragged breaths as she backpedalled away from the creature in the room. It just sat there, looking at her almost mournfully, but Rose wasn't about to blindly trust something that could get that deep into her mind again straight away. She cursed herself for forgetting the years of psychic training she had received when working for Torchwood in that other world. And the rules as well, drilled into her from her first day.

You don't touch what you don't understand.

"Go away." The voice that had saved her said coldly, but it was directed at the creature rather than her. "We don't want you here." The creature stared at Rose for a moment, before it looked past her and let out a noise that was almost a growl, before its attention flickered back to Rose, regarding her with doggy respect. With an earsplitting howl, it dissolved back into the streams of light that had created it, the tendrils flooding out of the room and back to the people from which they had came.

Rose, temporarily blinded by the sudden lack of light, felt around in the blackness until a guiding hand caught hers, waiting patiently for her eyes to readjust to the gloom. She found herself looking into the concerned face of Martha Jones, the woman reaching out to brush away a strand of flyaway hair from Roses' face. There was worry and confusion upon her face.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

"It was in my head." Rose said quietly, still hearing the echo of its singing. "It was singing to me."

"Wait right here." Martha said, leading her to a chair and delicately guiding her down into it. "I know someone who can help you. Just wait here."

Rose nodded, thinking that there wasn't anyone Martha could possibly know that could help, but amazed at the womans bravery in the face of something that must have seemed so otherworldly for her.

As Martha left the room at a sprint, Rose wrapped her arms around herself and trembled.

* * *

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* * *

_A/n: NEW WHO TONIGHT! :D_

_Leave a little review? –shakes tin emploringly-_


	7. Chapter 7

The black SUV which contained the three boys of Torchwood thundered along the city streets, taking the fastest known way to the hospital that was readily available to its occupants.

"One of the rift spikes has just faded." Toshiko said with slight surprise into all of their ears, though Jack barely noticed the noise, his concentration on the road, and miles away from the car, thoughts resting with worry for Rose. "However, the other four are getting stronger, moving steadily towards the hospital. They seem to cause fluctuations in CCTV recordings, so I can't get any accurate pictures of them, but the disruptions mean that their vectors are easily enough followed. They're big, whatever they are, so be careful."

"Good work, Tosh." Owen said, when it became obvious that Jack wasn't going to say something. The truth was he barely heard the words for the concerns in his head. The sounds seemed like the annoying buzzing of a fly over making sure that Rose was safe and protected.

"We still haven't figured out why the one that disappeared did so, but we're working on it." Tosh replied, her blush almost audible.

"We're trying to figure it out as we speak." Gwen added. "We're correlating the exact point of disappearance and once we've done that, we'll see if CCTV or any other scans can give us any idea as to what stopped it."

Jack's eyes narrowed at the continuing buzzing around him.

"Sir…" Ianto intoned worriedly from the front passenger seat, and Jack spared him a cursory glance, recognising his name before he turned his attention back to the road.

"Good work, you two." He muttered obligingly, though he had no idea what they had said. "Keep it up and get back to me when you have more results."

They gave their acknowledgement over the earpieces.

"If she's even half as strong as you say she is," Gwen said, seeming to realise how the Captain was feeling, "She'll be fine." And then in a sterner tone, "Keep your mind on the job at hand, Captain."

"Jack, one of the creatures has changed vectors." Tosh cut over the top of whatever Gwen was going to say next. Her voice was toneless which was a key signal to anyone that knew her well that she was trying not to panic. "Residual energy traces indicate that it's now moving away from the hospital, in your direction."

"Shit." Owen said, from the back seat, "They must have been tracking our technology." He pulled his gun out from where it was resting, tucked into the back of his belt. If Jack had had time or patience, he would have scolded Owen for that, but he merely pressed down even harder on the van's accelerator, pushing the car to the limit. He went straight through a red light without looking, ignoring the screeching of brakes and blazing horns that accompanied this manoeuvre. The streets raced past in a blur of headlamps and neon, streaking his vision in a myriad of bright colours and pitching black.

Suddenly, the lamps and colours abruptly shut off, leaving only pitch black ahead of them. Jack's reaction was nearly instantaneous. He slammed on the break and wrenched the steering wheel around, tyres screeching in the gloom of the night, the acrid smell of burnt rubber reaching their noses. Up ahead a creature rose out of the gloom of the night, the size of a horse, and the van spun from inertia, rising up onto two of its wheels threateningly before slamming back down onto all four, sending a tooth-rattling shockwave through the car.

They leapt out of the car, scrambling for their guns as they went, aiming them forward into the pitch gloom. People watched onwards in fear and curiosity as they slowly advanced away from the vehicle, into the gloomy night. And then, just as quickly as the lamps went out, they came back on, bathing the street in light and colour and sound.

People started screaming and wailing and everything became a blaze of moment as young and old ran in a terrified, congested lump away from the creature standing in the centre of the square, as Jack, Ianto and Owen tried to fight their way through the throng to the monster.

It was circling, growling and lunging at everything around it, one hapless victim getting in its way, and when it touched her, she screamed and disappeared in a black explosion of gunk, the same that seemed to be everywhere the creature stepped, fading moments after it came. "RUN!" Jack screamed at the people around, who didn't need to be told, let alone twice, as they were all fleeing as fast as they could. Jack whipped out his gun and pointed it at the creature who was stalking prey in an ever-increasing circumference.

The streetlights flickered menacingly when it growled, seeming to focus finally on the people who were heading towards it, realising the threat. It turned to face them, roaring purposefully.

"Alright, Houndoom." Owen said, "Time to go back into your ball."

The creature stepped forward, looking incredibly dangerous. Its form was skeletal and huge, resembling a greyhound grown to the size of a large horse, with large, serrated fangs protruding from its upper jaw like a sabre-toothed tiger. Ebony plates lined its body and legs, scaly skin glittering like stars in the streetlamp's light. A sharp row of spines, almost draconian, sprouted from the base of its neck and continued down its back to the base of its long, whippet-like tail. The spines were the colour of old bones and were emphasised by ram horns on either side of its head, four in total, that curled around and in on themselves, shining from within with what seemed to be a natural phosphorescence. Its blood red eyes regarded the three of them in turn.

Jack, of course, was momentarily distracted. "What's a Houndoom?" He asked Owen, his gun trained on the advancing creature.

Ianto snorted in amusement, as Owen failed to answer.

The beast lunged at Jack, teeth bared wide in what would be a savage bite, and the three men scattered away from it, as it landed and its momentum flung it forward a few paces before it spun and turned, growling low in the back of its throat.

"Isn't a Houndoom a sort of Pokémon?" Gwen wondered aloud over the communications as the creature turned to face Jack, snarling and feral. "My cousin used to play that game when he was a kid and that one was his favourite."

"Gwen, could you perhaps not get distracted by the finer points?" Owen bit out rather nastily, his embarrassment plain to hear in his tone.

"Sorry." She said, then proceeded to change the subject. "I can't get CCTV of the area you are in, Jack. Also, I'm getting really weird rift energy readings off whatever it is. It's almost like it negates the air around it with a sort of antimatter field."

"That explains the black goop." Owen said, still sounding embarrassed and bitter.

Tosh didn't ask as the creature lunged again towards Ianto, who leapt aside instinctively, and only just in time as its teeth snapped around the air where he had just been moments before. "Don't let it touch you." Tosh warned. "There's no telling what coming into contact with this energy will do."

"Don't need to tell us twice, Tosh." Jack said, taking aim at the advancing creature. "Try to subdue it, boys, but don't kill it, I want to know what it is." The creature spun and darted forward wildly, baying. Jack corrected his aim and fired.

There was a loud crunch and a splat, and the creature let out an ear-shattering scream of agony and rage, rounding on Jack, eyes burning with ferocity, and rolling in their sockets. This time it lunged at him in earnest, black blood spilling all over the ground from its right front paw.

Its new speed surprised Jack, who only just managed to get out of the way of its lunge, realising belatedly that it had either been toying with them, or trying to hold them up. "Oh great. I just managed to make it mad." He overbalanced as he dodged another lunge and he fell to the ground, the creature going flying over his head. It landed and turned, teeth set into a fierce snarl as it advanced on its fallen quarry.

And suddenly, a shape barrelled into it from its right side, sending it flying as it took the full hit of Owen, shoving it aside. Jack's eyes widened in fear for his companion, as the creature was knocked flying and Owen landed a few feet away, black goop exploding all over his body.

But unlike the girl earlier, he failed to vanish into nothing.

The creature got up and shook its head in surprise, as Owen sat up and pointed his gun at it. He took advantage of its momentary confusion to fire a few shots at its now moving form, all of them missing widely, due to his aim being obscured by black gunk. It bellowed in confusion and rage as it lunged at him, fangs bared, but both Jack and Ianto had had quite enough. They emptied their guns as one into the creature's head, and it went rigid, momentum carrying it forwards and over Owen, to where it came to a thudding stop by Ianto's feet. The man leapt backwards, wary of what the creature could do.

The dead thing then dissolved into a pile of the black goop that covered Owen, fading into the pavement as if it never was, and leaving behind it a pungent smell of ozone and turpentine.

"Rift activity fading." Tosh said in Jack's ear and he jumped in surprise, having forgotten her watching presence in the heat of the firefight. "Oh! And CCTV footage has just come back up. I can see you all."

"What about the other three rift spikes?"

"Still active, and so close in vicinity that I can't really tell one from the other anymore." She told him.

Owen raised a hand and inspected its stickyness.

"Owen," Jack said, "Take a sample of that goo back to the labs, You're the only one allowed to touch it, since we know for certain that it doesn't affect you." Jack frowned and stretched, holstering his gun and looking at the SUV behind him. "Take the van, the hospital is close enough to go to on foot. Tosh, Gwen, keep watching the rift for further activity."

"Sir." Tosh and Gwen said as one, and if Gwen sounded a bit sulky and useless, Jack didn't mention it.

"If any of you come across one of the other of these things, I don't want you to touch it, understand? I have a feeling I know what they are, and why they couldn't kill Owen. But the others of us don't have his immunity. If you see one, you kill it, as soon as possible, without letting it touch you, understand?"

The chorus of answering 'yes's came in tones ranging from sulky to just plain scared.

"Ianto, when you're ready."

Ianto nodded and started on foot in the direction of Jack and the hospital, though he paused when he was level with Torchwood's resident doctor. "So Owen," He said, and the man who was getting up from the ground looked at him curtly.

"I hear you like Mudkips." Ianto finished with a smirk, drawing the 's' out until it sounded like a 'z'.

"Go to Hell, Teaboy."

* * *

The Doctor thundered down the passage, Martha and Donna hot on his heels as he passed doors and doors of wards, following something that he only really half-felt and didn't want to pay attention to.

"So there was this golden-wolf thing." He said to her, his voice lined with strained patience, "And she was going to touch it and you told her not to."

"Yeah, she said it was singing in her head. Like it was calling out to her and half controlling her actions."

"And you told it to go away, and it listened to you?" He tried his best to not sound incredulous but it really didn't work and as he spoke it lined his voice in spades. Martha said nothing in reply, panting ever 

so slightly as she tried to keep up with his long and quick stride. He looked over his shoulder at her, as she seemed to realise that he couldn't see her actions when she was behind him. She swallowed.

"Yeah." She said, "That's right. I told her to wait there while I went to fetch someone who could help. And then I came to get you."

"What did you do a silly thing like that for?"

"I dunno;" She said, sounding slightly put out as if she had been expecting praise that had failed to come, "Something to do with you being _the_ expert on strange occurrences. I thought you might want to talk to her about it and find out what is going on?"

"That was a bit sarcastic, there, Martha Jones." The Doctor replied, dripping his own sarcasm back at her. But it was good logic so as a small reward he slowed his pace so that the girls could keep up without gasping. "So you left her alone and ran to get me." The Doctor said slowly, trusting Martha to see the errors in her actions if he stated them at her, "Not thinking that whatever it was could _come back_ while you were gone?"

"I couldn't bring her to you! The girl was exhausted!"

"I was concussed!"

"Time Lords don't get concussed." Donna sing-songed from his other side. The Doctor stopped and turned to her, opening his mouth and pointing. She gave him a 'do-you-really-want-to-try-it?' glare and he thought the better of it, his finger curling back into his fist, knowing he dare not.

_Coward, every time._ A strangely familiar voice sang from his memories.

He growled low in his throat and started down the corridor again, the two girls re-taking their flanking positions. "You still left her alone, Martha Jones." He contemplated the rhyme for a moment before dismissing it, the situation was too serious for rhymes. "You couldn't have called? Made me come to the both of you?"

"Your phone is switched off!"

"No it's not!"

"Yes it is!"

"No!"

"Ye-es."

"Children!" Both of them jumped to attention at Donna's tone.

"Anyway. You're just dodging the point. There was something in her head; I think a little exhaustion can wait as opposed to her safety." The Doctor said it in a final tone and continued down to the hall at the 

end of the corridor. He heard her intake of breath and cut her off before she had any chance to turn it into speech. "Don't." He said. "It's not important at the moment as opposed to getting whoever this girl is out of that room safely."

He heard her jaw click shut and felt her eyes boring into the back of his skull. He grinned. The walk continued in silence for a few moments, before Donna said' "Can anyone else hear that?" She said, jerking her head to the side.

The other two paused, listening.

"It's the song again!" Martha said excitedly, "The one that was playing before, with the girl."

The Doctor frowned, concentrating, and wondered why he couldn't hear it, if the humans could. His face twisted for a moment, and then he sensed it, just beyond his mental barriers, trying to get into his mind against wards that were too strong. A weak psychic energy, one that could swamp humans easily because of their latent psychic tendencies, but was small enough to go unnoticed by himself. He frowned, and like tuning a radio, he tuned his psychic frequencies to one where he could hear the noise, and dampened and haunting and with just the slightest interference from Donna and Martha's minds, he heard it.

"A song." He said, confused, "And not just any song, one directed at humans, deliberately tuned to humans' latent psychic talents." He put his tongue between his teeth. "Thinkthinkthink. It was so quiet that I could barely hear it, until I detected it. What species does that? Golden energy, wolf-like, think!"

He couldn't think of anything and that made him come up short.

"The music's familiar." Donna said, her brows furrowed in concentration. It's like I've heard it before somewhere. "

"Oh?"

"It's like that nursery song." Donna told him.

"Ooh!" Martha suddenly said, grabbing the other woman's arm. "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf! That's the song!"

And the Doctor rounded on them so fast that they both stepped back. He didn't notice, he had more important things on his mind than human reactions. "Who's afraid of the _what?_"

"You know!" Donna sung a few lines from the song, slightly shaken by the Doctor's sudden reaction to the song title.

The Doctor felt his body freeze for a moment as the things Martha had described and the songs and even some of the things that he and Donna had seen on their travels slowly fell into place and led to a conclusion that was simply impossible.

There was a scream from down the hallway that threw out his concentration. "COME ON!" He yelled, talking off at a sprint. He didn't bother waiting for the girls, but he heard them coming after him anyway.

* * *

"Ianto and I have reached the hospital now. We're moving in."

"The disturbances are coming from a hall on the east side, third level up. Be careful."

Jack switched off his communicator and stepped into the darkened hospital.

* * *

.

* * *

_A/n: How AWESOME was that moment in Poison Sky? You know the one I'm talking about. XD_

_Well, the several I'm talking about. (GAS MASK. BRIGADEER REFERENCE. CONSOLE SCREEN.)_

_Okay, the whole episode I'm talking about._

_Next chapter has the long-awaited reunion scene! _

_Feed the Authoress? –shakes tin with puppy dog eyes-_


	8. Chapter 8

The Doctor flew down the corridors at such a pace that Donna and Martha had to sprint to keep up and were very much out of breath within a few yards. The Doctor didn't seem to notice this as he darted around corridors seemingly instinctively, not even slowing as he started up a large flight of stairs to take him to the third level of the hospital. Donna gave Martha a bewildered look, but had no breath to spare as she followed after the mad alien ahead of them, who didn't look like he was going to slow down any time soon, in fact, was putting on the pace even more.

_Where does he get the __**energy**_? Donna thought, bewildered, as she panted with the exertion of keeping up. His long stride didn't help matters as he barrelled towards the source of the scream.

"Impossible!" She heard him say, as in actually _talk_ and she glared at his back with more than a little impatience. He was muttering to himself as he ran, and Donna only managed to catch snatches of it in the sprint, her chest and legs burning as he loped along, not even sweating and mumbling to himself under his breath. "It can't be. It just _can't_ be." His mutterings dissolved into an inaudible stream of babble that Donna couldn't keep up with. This worried Donna, for as nutty as the Doctor was, he never had this distracted babbling air about him, like his mind was in far too many places at once. She wanted to tell him to get a hold of himself, but he was moving so fast that she didn't have the breath to spare if she wanted to keep up with him.

And then, he stopped, so suddenly that she nearly ran into the back of him, and Martha actually did, stumbling and panting, out of breath. He didn't even turn to catch her, and if Donna hadn't been resting her hands on her knees and taking in huge breaths of air, she would have told him off for that.

The Doctor wasn't even slightly winded, and Donna glared at him when she noticed this, her lungs burning as she gulped down air and he just stood there, looking at the door. She straightened, eventually, pointing a finger at him, chest heaving. "If… you… _ever_… try…" He turned and glanced at her distractedly, and Donna was cut off mid sentence by the look upon his face.

She had never seen such an open and startled look on his face before.

Hope warred with disbelief and adamant refusal, which was contradicted a moment later when his expression shifted unconsciously to one of grim acceptance, and then to sorrow and guilt so deep that they must have been seeped into the very soul of his persona. And when he shifted his expression back to the door, there was also a reluctant joy as fragile and tiny as a baby bird, with wings barely strong enough to hold it up, and so easily shattered. He was at war with himself, Donna noticed, his hand trembling and caught halfway between his side and the handle of the door they stood in front of, both ready to surge forward and ready to bolt as one.

Donna found she couldn't say anything, less that snap the tension which was so palpable, the room was humming with it.

"I…" The Doctor started, and then swallowed, frozen where he was, and like a statue except for the slight trembles that were running all over him.

So Donna decided to do a very Donna-like thing. If the damn man was that caught up in Fight or Flee response, she would decide for him. She straightened, still panting harshly, and she shoved past the man, who locked her with a look equal parts frightened, confused and slightly angry, as if she was taking some sort of choice she didn't understand from him. She ignored the look, put her hand on the doorknob and turned it, pushing inwards.

The door swung open. Donna sighed.

"Well?"

"Go on then!" Martha said at the same time, finally catching her own breath, and pushing slightly on him.

Their teamwork seemed to snap the Doctor out of his frozen state. "Right!" He said, "Very good, Donna! Well done! Allons-y, you two!" He didn't move for another moment, before in a flurry of everything-at-once, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, darting forward into the room. Brandishing the sonic device in front of him like a torch, he stepped into the room beyond the darkened hallway, Martha and Donna following his skinny back with some mild trepidation.

The room was a communal hall, large and wide, and Donna stopped rock-still when she saw what was in the centre of it, it looked like a black dome, perfectly circular, placed almost in the middle of the room and taking up the vast majority of it. The Doctor was already by one of its closer points, examining its pitch surface. It was a big, black space of _nothing_ and Donna felt a sick sense of vertigo when she looked at it, and found herself unwilling to approach it any further. It was only when Martha, pale even for her dark skin, stepped forward and past her that Donna finally decided to follow into the room. The Doctor was shining the Sonic Screwdriver at the dome's surface, the whirr of its mechanics, and footsteps the only sound in the silence. The fluorescent lights above flickered on and off. Gooseflesh ran up Donna's arms, and she shuddered and rubbed them, trying to make the feeling of unease go away.

"What is it?" She said, still slightly out of breath from their sprint.

"A warning." The Doctor said, but his face betrayed more than this, flickers of worry marred with disbelief, better contained than they had been, but still _there_, flew across his features. "An impossible warning. This is a shell, a void-containment."

"A what?" Martha asked, and he gave her a quick withering look.

"It's a shell. Harmless and perfectly easy to pass through, but it's here to warn off bystanders. It blocks sight and sound into and out of the contained area while whatever is happening inside happens. It's like a bubble though, pass through the outer membrane and the surface shatters, exposing what's inside."

"It wasn't here before." Martha said, looking about the room. "Do you think it's that dog thing again?"

"No." The Doctor said, "Only one species has the ability to create one of these." He didn't elaborate further. "But there's no questioning it, your girl" His voice trembled, "Is inside this thing, so we should get her out."

He didn't move.

Martha and Donna waited with bated breath, before Martha finally stepped forward, examining the thing in more detail. Finally, she sighed. "Come on then, let's pop it and get that girl out." Donna knew she was partly doing it out of guilt that she'd left the girl alone in the first place, but also partly because the Doctor's odd behaviour was scaring her. Donna knew the feeling, it was playing with her emotions too.

"It's a warning." The Doctor breathed. "Warnings are usually best left alone."

"Yeah, and that's never stopped you before." Donna pointed out, her voice never raising above a frightened whisper.

The Doctor turned to her, and suddenly all of the seriousness and oddness of his behaviour fell away as he broke into a reckless grin. "Good point!" He said, and flung himself into the surface of the black shell.

With a loud, echoing bang, it disappeared instantly, and the room was flooded with noise and light, where black and silence had been. Donna reeled with the sudden sensory input as detail flooded her where nothing had been. Crashes, bangs and animalistic snarls echoed through the hall, and in the centre of the area where nothing had been stood a girl, a familiar blonde girl that Donna thought she recognised, but couldn't quite place. The girl was fighting off three of what looked to be dogs from Hell, black and armoured with white spikes running down their backs. She was armed with a plastic chair and standing on another, swinging her impromptu weapon on any of the dogs that came close. She had a whole arsenal of chairs beside her, and the reason for this became apparent when she threw her chair at one of the creatures, and the plastic exploded on contact, the thing leaping back and yelping. She quickly wrenched up another chair and pushing it forward at another one of the creatures who was slinking closer. There was broken plastic scattered all over the floor.

In a moment of distraction, perhaps realising the change of circumstance, the girl looked up and straight into the eyes of the Doctor, who was once again frozen.

"Rose?" He breathed barely audibly, talking a faltering step forward. He didn't seem to notice the dog-creatures.

The girl glared at him. "It's about time you bloody well showed up!" She snapped, swinging her chair weapon at a dog which had lunged, "Now are you going to stand there and catch flies, or are you going to help?"

The Doctor instantly became a flurry of movement, throwing himself forwards and towards her, armed with only his sonic screwdriver. Donna and Martha stared in confusion for a moment.

"You two as well!" The blonde snapped impatiently. "God, you're all useless!"

It was then that Donna noticed something else, the girl, Rose, was running out of chairs. Without thinking, she darted forward, Martha hot on her heels.

* * *

The sounds of a fight crashed through the hospital, and instantly Jack and Ianto changed direction, guns at the ready.

* * *

It was easier to subdue the creatures than it should have been.

Brandishing his screwdriver and a sort of ruthlessness that Rose didn't recognise, the man who she didn't let herself believe was the _proper_ Doctor leapt into the fray, his two companions arming themselves quickly with chairs. The creatures hadn't been interested with them, and Rose hadn't really been surprised, knowing that they'd chosen her for their quarry and that they probably wouldn't give up their prey without a fight.

Over the years, Rose had learnt a lot about pack mentality.

The man-who-was-not-the-Doctor (She had to believe that, she really did, because she couldn't meet him yet, not yet, not while she was still _broken_ and mission-bound.) leapt forward, his screwdriver releasing an ear-piercing scream that made the creatures howl brokenly, staggering back. He took up position in front of her, and from her position on the chair, she could look over his head at the now-wary creatures.

"What are they?" She asked, the pragmatics of the situation overcoming everything else, every confusing emotion that she might feel over the effort of making it out alive and relatively intact.

"_Canis sanguin._" The man replied, his hair sticking up at odd angles, as she tried to detatch herself from his presence. He was different from what she remembered, and more importantly, different than what she was used to, but she couldn't let herself think like that. She had to believe that this was not the man she wanted it to be. She _had to._ "Void Hounds."

She couldn't.

The other two girls in the room backed up and took up positions on either side of her, defensive, chairs raised. She stepped off her vantage point and joined in the little circle of three, taking her position between the man and a redhead who was slightly shorter than her, but seemed so much taller than she was.

"Who are you then?" The woman asked, but Rose found no time to answer as one of the creatures lunged at her again.

The man stepped in front of her and stared it down, letting out a hiss of anger, and the creature backed off, slunk to the far corner of the room.

The sonic screwdriver let off another shriek, and one of the animals turned and fled right then, a portal of black opening behind it, which it slunk off through, amidst the angry barks of the other two who remained.

The not-Doctor in the end, managed to subdue the creatures with a word, hissed out angry and unintelligible, shot at the larger of the two remaining beasts, the alpha of the pack. It startled the creature, and the beast gave him such a look of painful intelligence laced with confusion, that Rose realised whatever the word was must have meant something. It barked, once, gave the man a reproachful look and glanced at Rose, who glared at it and waved her chair threateningly. It looked back to the man, and turned, jerking its head at its pack mate, before two more black portals appeared and the creatures sunk off.

There was a moment in which everyone gathered breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief, before Rose realised who had saved her, and spun out of the protective circle , face set in determination, chair up at the ready to swing at any of them who came close to her.

The man had reacted as well, his sonic screwdriver up and pointed at her, feet set shoulder-width apart, gaze smouldering with rage.

"Doctor!" Martha Jones snapped, tugging on his arm, "What are you DOING?"

"Don't come near me." Rose snapped at the imposter Doctor, holding her chair up and staring him down. "Don't come NEAR me!"

Pain laced the not-Doctor's face for a moment, before his expression snapped into focus and he glared at her. "Oh, whoever you are, it was a bad idea for you to wear that face." His voice was rage and darkness, and Rose involuntarily took a step back. This couldn't be her Doctor. "Because now I'm very, very angry."

"Doctor?" Martha sounded confused, but Rose was too far gone in her adrenaline induced state to care.

The redhead came around his other side, and said something snappish to try and get his attention away from her, Rose barely even noticed, and the man did even less, brushing her aside as if she were a fly.

"And do you know why I'm very, very angry?" The man continued, taking a step forward, and Rose instinctively stepped back. "Well?" He prompted when Rose didn't answer straight away.

She gulped, and something about the way he was talking, something about the way he was standing didn't seem right for what he was doing. Like it was more of a show, the anger, and there was something beneath it, deep and troubled and uneasy, almost as if… no.

But she had to try.

"What's a word that rhymes with Kasterborous?" She demanded, a memory swimming to her of a face-changing planet and a code-word that had been used.

The Sonic-screwdriver fell, and the angry expression melted into one of panicked disbelief. She could see it, something glittering just behind his eyes as he took another step forward. She brought her chair up, glaring at him angrily, warning him off.

"Answer me!" She yelled, panicked and ready to bolt.

His chest was heaving, up and down with something. His eyes were glistening, and his hand reached forward, to the chair, taking one of the legs and pushing down gently. She wasn't sure why she lowered the chair, perhaps it was the movement, the care implied, as she looked at him, her brown eyes wide and frightened as he slowly took a step forward and reached out to touch her face. She couldn't quite contain her flinch, which caused a flicker of hurt to flash over his face.

"Gallifrey." He said, quietly, and she sucked in a breath, the chair clattering to the ground between them.

"What? That doesn't rhyme." The redhead said, but Rose chose to ignore her, for the shock that was slowly settling over her. It was him.

And then, it actually penetrated her mind. It. Was. _Him_.

She flung herself forward, sobbing with something that she hadn't felt in a long time, and he wrapped her in his arms, thin and strong and oh-so-familiar. He swung her around once, up through the air before he put her back on the ground and held on for dear life, just as she clung to him.

"Oh Rose Tyler. Rose. My precious girl. You impossible thing! How did you manage this?"

She buried her face in his shoulder, smelling time and space and chestnuts (That one had always confused her) and the scratchy feel of his striped jim-jams (Why was he wearing _those?_) was a comfort against her cheek. She could feel the confusion coming off the two people watching this little interchange, but she didn't _care_, this was _her Doctor_ and he was _here!_ It was unbelievable.

He reached up abruptly and scratched at the base of his hair line. "Sorry, itch. I always seem to get those at the most inopportune times. Really insufferable this one too. Donna says I'll go bald."

She gave a watery laugh, pulling away slightly. Maybe not so unbelievable.

He smiled down at her and pulled away, but didn't entirely let go, keeping his arms wrapped protectively around her. One of his hands crept into her hairline to play with the hair at the base of her neck, sending goosebumps down her skin.

"Oh GOD." She said and yanked away suddenly, a hand coming to her mouth, "I threatened you with a CHAIR."

He laughed. It made her realise just how much she had missed that sound.

* * *

Jack burst into the room with a gun at the ready to find the strangest looking gathering of aliens that he had ever seen.

Strange for Aliens, perhaps, which they weren't.

Well, mostly.

"I'm surprised he hasn't snogged you yet." Said a voice, and Jack looked over in the direction it came from.

"Yeah, the way he _talked_ about you, on and on, that man did." Martha Jones said, completely ignoring Jack's dramatic entrance.

"We're not like _that_." Rose replied, puzzled. "We're best mates." She had looked up briefly upon Jacks entry, and then gone back to the conversation. Her head was resting on the Doctor's shoulder, and his arm was slung protectively around her, nose buried in the hair just above her temple. His eyes were closed, and there was something on his face that Jack hadn't seen before in this incarnation of the man.

"Sure." Said a redhead that Jack didn't yet know, "Mates." She raised a sceptical eyebrow, and had also ignored Jack when he had come in.

Jack felt a little silly, actually, so he lowered his gun and gestured for Ianto to do the same behind him, stepping into the room.

"Hello Jack." The Doctor said, voice muffled slightly as he didn't bother to lift his head up. "What brings you and your friend here?"

Jack surveyed the room. The four people were seated in a ring of chairs, surrounded by a further ring of shattered plastic, and they were just idly chatting. Rose was in a hospital gown, the Doctor in striped blue and white pyjamas, and Martha in a lab coat. The redhead was just in a nice, casual blouse and a pair of comfortable-looking black slacks.

"Rift activity, actually." Jack said, sparing them all a hopeless glance. "Should have known you'd beat me to it if Rose was involved."

* * *

.

* * *

_A/n: There. Reunion. _

_Next chapter: The Doctor notices Rose is behaving strangely and confronts her about it. Jack flirts. Gwen acts as a confidante; for everybody. And Rose notices a startling trend amongst the Torchwood team that leads her to an unpleasant conclusion._

_Feed the authoress? -waves tin and gives puppy-dog eyes-_


	9. Chapter 9

Of course, that was when everything started going wrong.

Well, not straight away, but near enough to the moment, things started going horrendously ugly and full of very bad things. The first of which was the TARDIS starting to behave very strangely indeed.

Rose stood outside the locked door and stared at it with a sort of hopeless longing on her face. She touched the warm wood outside the hospital, with the Doctor standing at her back, with a shocked expression on his face, a broken key on the ground at his feet. His head was itching like mad, but he refused to scratch it, because there were more important things at hand, namely getting Rose inside the TARDIS.

It was flatly refusing to let her in, and he'd tried everything, from begging to clicking and everything in between. He'd spent ten whole minutes stroking her wooden panelling and whispering sweet nothings, looking positively alarming to any innocent bystander. But there was still no budge, no opening of the doors, no consent at all to let Rose inside.

Jack was waiting patiently just over his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around Rose's bare shoulders to keep her warm in the night chill. Donna and Martha were already inside the big blue box, which he was sorely tempted to kick.

What's more, now the TARDIS was refusing to let people _out_ as well, in what the Doctor assumed was a case of keeping her doors closed against all possibility of Rose sneaking on board. She hummed angrily under his hands, shuddered violently when he demanded that she stop the silliness at once, and the light on top flashed twice before blinking out permanently.

Being ignored by one's own spaceship was never a nice feeling, but being ignored to the point of non-admittance was something new for the Doctor. Rose looked crestfallen, and she was staring down at her broken key in despair; she had tried to unlock the doors when they had swung closed, and the key had snapped quite neatly and very deliberately in two. The Time Lord was close to swearing and the TARDIS was getting even more stubborn, even to the point of flickering out of existence once to prove its point.

Rose turned away sadly, wriggled out from under the Doctor's arm and took a few steps back towards Jack. The TARDIS doors opened.

This time, the Doctor really did swear. "What is going on?" He demanded of his machine, as Donna and Martha tumbled out onto the pavement in a tangled heap of limbs. They had obviously been trying to get out as much as the Doctor had been trying to get in, and as Rose turned around to see what had happened, the TARDIS doors swung shut again with an ominous creak and a loud bang. She had forcefully ejected her passengers, and was now sitting harmlessly, and looking very petulant - for a Police Box.

"Listen to me, you stupid... box-" The Doctor began, but the TARDIS wavered threateningly in and out of existence before it settled once again, and the Doctor lowered his pointing finger and stared at the blue panelling for a moment.

"Doctor," Said Jack, stepping forward to drag him away from his ship, "Maybe we should just leave her for the time being and find out why she's not letting us back in, do you think? Rose can tell us how she dimension hopped while we're at it."

"No I can't." Rose said, just as the Doctor waved Jack away and stared at his machine a while longer.

When it proved to be a fruitless effort, he let out an explosive sigh and swore under his breath, taking off his greatcoat and shoving it blindly in Rose's general direction. "Here." He said, sounding bitter, "Take this because it'll keep you warm until we can get back to Jack's base."

He completely missed the fact that the TARDIS' bronzed front panel had changed inscriptions. He probably wouldn't have been so mad, if he'd noticed that. In fact, he probably would have been very, very worried.

_It is time._ It said, _The Vortex has been opened. The Hounds are coming. _

* * *

The ride back to the hub was an uneasy one. Gwen had met them in the SUV outside the hospital, and now they were all piled in the black van, making their slow way to Roald Dahl Plass. The Doctor was very deliberately seated next to Rose, with Donna very deliberately seated on his other side, Martha and Ianto in the seats hastily pulled down in the very back. Jack was driving and Gwen was shotgun, though she was craning her neck around so she could talk to the passengers behind her.

"I don't understand it!" The Doctor fumed, his temper more than soured by his stubborn ship's reaction to someone he had thought she had missed entirely. It was a testament to Rose, Donna thought, that it hadn't even occurred to him to fly the TARDIS to the base without her, and that they all had to be piled uncomfortably into the car. "Well, I do a bit." He corrected after a moment. "Rose isn't supposed to be here, after all. The universe should have imploded by now. But what I really don't understand is why the TARDIS won't let her in."

"Would you just leave it?" Rose said, sounding dejected, but the Doctor didn't hear her. Gwen put a hand on the girl's shoulder discreetly, and said something that Donna didn't catch.

"You haven't eaten anything funny, have you Rose? Anything that might give you gas?" He pulled out his Sonic Screwdriver and started scanning her, though Rose flinched away.

"What's that?" Gwen enquired of him, gesturing at the sonic device. "And just who are you two anyway?"

"Oh! Sorry! Good to meet you, I'm the Doctor."

"And I'm Donna."

Gwen and Ianto went very, very quiet.

Donna noticed immediately, but the Doctor either didn't, or chose not to, and went right on babbling. "I mean it could be just something you picked up travelling across the voids, how did you _do_ that, by the way? And in a few days, when it's worn off she'll be fine with you again, but for now she really is having a problem with you." He frowned, and looked at the device in his hand. "And this isn't picking up any strange readings." He said, whacking it against his palm.

"Doctor?" Donna began, taking in the way that Gwen and Ianto were staring at him in something bordering on awe and amazement.

"How about we try again tomorrow? Or I can come back here and bring the TARDIS to the hub and we can run some tests on her, make sure she's not playing up and being faulty in her old age."

"DOCTOR."

The Doctor fell silent and looked at Donna expectantly.

She jerked her head, first in Gwen's direction and then in Ianto's, then graced him with a very deliberately blank look. His brow furrowed, but he followed her gaze anyway, for Martha had reached over the seat back and had placed her hand upon his shoulder carefully. The Doctor turned back to Donna, eyebrows raised. "I see your point." This said, he turned to Jack. "Tell me, Jack, does Torchwood still have those first few lines written in the charter?"

"Sorry." Was all Jack said.

"Those lines which state that if Torchwood were ever to encounter me, I am quote, unquote an 'alien threat'?"

"I did say sorry." Jack replied.

"Right." The Doctor said, looking first at Rose and then at Donna. "So, who wants to switch places with me?"

"Why?" Asked Rose, voice a little too curious for Donna's liking, as if she really would switch places with him, in a moving car on the highway.

"So I can bail out, of course." The Doctor replied, very reasonably.

* * *

He wasn't so reasonable at the hub.

There had been arguing, and there had been attempts to handcuff and take bloods, and there had been a heated discussion over the fact that Owen was dead-but-not-quite. (It had only taken the Doctor one look to work out that much, and he'd yelled at _Jack_ about it, in what Jack thought was a very undignified manner. Jack, of course had argued that it wasn't really his fault that Owen was permanently undead, of course, no more than it was Rose's fau- The Doctor had looked at him witheringly and he didn't complete the sentence.) At some point, Rose had gotten sick of the shouting, announced she was tired and had decided to head in the direction of her camp bed, and the Doctor looked torn between continuing to yell at Jack about Space and Time and follow her to make sure she didn't disappear the moment she was out of arms reach. Propriety, however, won; and he remained to rip strips off Jack who was now looking longingly at the direction Rose had gone in so that he could at least talk to someone sensible.

Donna was sitting in a corner, amicably talking to Martha and Gwen about the turn of events and sipping at a cup of coffee, while Toshiko analysed the rift readings for the past few hours, confirming no anomalies since the strange dog things had appeared.

"I dunno." Donna said, finally. "It seems like he pined away forever over Rose, and now that he's got her back, he's not even going to talk to her. It seems a bit unfair to me, don't you think?"

Gwen sighed. "I've only heard some of the tale from Rose, but from what I can see, she's not acting the way I thought she would either. It's like she doesn't want to be in the same room as him."

"Just friends, she said. But the way he talks about her, they have to be more than that." Donna frowned at her coffee mug, and Martha played with the ring on her finger, looking at the way the diamond set into it caught the light.

"Well, I think they're both being stupid." She said, pragmatically. "If there's something the matter, something that was unsaid before they got separated or the like, they should be locked up in a room together so it all gets sorted out. Best solution to anything, that."

"What makes you say that?" Donna asked, curious at where the child-like logic had come from.

"Got my parents back together, it did. Though it may have also been the threat of near-certain death hanging over their heads as well." She announced that so casually that the other two stared at her for a moment. "...What?"

"Lock them in a room together, you say?" Donna said, sounding slightly evil.

At their contemplative pause, the Doctor's voice floated over. "AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING. That pterodactyl is a blip on the space-time continuum and should be sent back to pre-history immediately! Do you know what it's doing to the RIFT to have that thing here?"

"Well, he's going to be going on for a while." Martha said, sighing. "Perhaps one of us should go talk to Rose first."

Gwen sighed and put her mug down. "I'll do it." She said, standing, and moving towards where Rose's bed was kept. "No offense to you two or anything, but Rose actually knows me." The point was valid, so the other two chose not to question it.

And so Gwen gently knocked on the door where the girl was and let herself in carefully, peeking around the door to make sure she wasn't disturbing Rose in the middle of anything. She wasn't – Rose was curled up on top of her camp bed, staring blankly at the table where they had meetings and meals as if 

she couldn't see it. Her brown eyes were dark and rimmed with red as if she had been crying, but her pillow wasn't damp and her mascara hadn't run, so Gwen rationalized that she was trying her hardest not to cry. Gwen crossed the room slowly, giving Rose plenty of notice of her approach, as the girl tracked her, eyes still not quite focused.

Gwen pulled a chair up to the bed and sat on it backwards in what she hoped was an amicable way, brushing her hair behind her ears and sighing. "Trouble in paradise?" She asked, with a smile, and Rose focused on her suddenly.

She didn't say anything, but regarded Gwen as one might regard a strange dog. Her eyes were full of wariness.

"He seems quite hung up on you, then." Gwen tried a different track, reaching out slowly, and brushing Rose's hair off her cheek. "And he's a bit of a looker, isn't he? Skinny, but very fit, if you don't mind my saying."

Rose smiled weakly at this. "We're friends." She said, and sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of that fact.

"Oh now, don't be shy. I've seen the way you two are looking at each other when you think we're not looking, and I've only seen the two of you together this past hour." She grinned at Rose. "And think of how jealous it'll make Jack. That's got to be worth something."

Rose let out a watery laugh and rose into a seated position, still clutching her arms about herself defensively. "The TARDIS locked me out." She said quietly. "I mean, I physically can't get into the TARDIS anymore. What good am I as a companion if I can't travel with him?"

"A companion? Is that what they're calling it these days?" Gwen tried a weak attempt at a joke. Rose smiled, but the expression died quickly.

"It's what he calls us. His friends, his travelling companions."

"It can't be that bad, Rose." Gwen smiled, and played with her hair, scooping it to the back of her head and tying it in a messy bun. "You just think it's bad at the moment because you can't see past one little fact. He said it could be temporary after all."

"It's not." Rose said, and sighed. "I..." She swallowed and looked at Gwen, really looked at her for a moment. "It's..." She shook her head as if to clear it.

"What is it, Rose?"

"I have a secret." She said, "Only that's exactly what it is, it's a secret that I can't tell to anyone; not even him. The TARDIS not letting me in; it's not temporary – I know exactly why it happened and it's driving me mad because if I tell anyone it could get them killed. Even him. Even the Doctor could die if he knew what was happening, what I have to do."

"What do you have to do, Rose?" Gwen asked, reaching out to her, but she ducked away, stood up and moved out of Gwen's reach.

"See, that's the thing, Gwen. If I tell you, you'd be killed."

"But that doesn't stop you from being with the Doctor, does it? Isn't that what you've wanted to happen since you came here?"

Rose shook her head. "If we're anything more than friends, if my relationship with any of you goes beyond friendship..." She trailed off, and looked away. "Look, it's just best that you don't even get involved with me, Gwen Cooper. I've already told you far too much for your own safety."

"My job is to deal with things like this, Rose Tyler." Gwen snapped, suddenly angry. "Don't you tell me what I can and can't do, because I'm not stupid, and I do know what I'm doing. I may not know all the details, but I do know that I want to help."

Rose paused and looked at Gwen then, really looked at her, something sparking in her eyes. "Oh my _God_. Jack _didn't._"

* * *

"Rose." This time there was no 'Tyler' at the end. This time he wasn't pleased or impressed with her, this time he had come seeking answers and nothing more. At least, nothing which she would admit to. She sighed from where she was watching the large screen in front of her, carefully turned away from the door for when he finally came in. He didn't disappoint and stepped into the room, standing at the other side of the table to her, his voice stern but unsure.

She turned, wrapping her arms around herself for defence, to look him directly in the eyes. The brown was worried beyond belief and she tried to fight against the small tug that pulled at her stomach. She looked down and to the left, unable to keep up the eye contact for long.

"I was speaking to Gwen, earlier." He said, and she flinched. Of course Gwen would have said something, she thought, Gwen was probably acting as everyone's confidante right now. When things start to go wrong, you could always count on two things, Gwen trying to comfort people in her own awkward way, and Owen's sarcasm. Jack flirting with everything wasn't quite as solid, but it was up there. It was just a table-length that separated them, but suddenly it felt like they were universes apart, even more so than when she had been in the other world. The distance was impossible for her to cross, she thought, at least for her to cross the way she was now. "She threatened to lock me in here if I didn't come to talk to you willingly, so here I am."

She nodded, swallowed and said nothing, and he fell silent, unsure.

She chanced a glance up at him, to find him still looking at her, something like longing in his eyes and she knew that he wanted to come over to her, to touch her, but was wary of what Gwen was bound to 

have said to him. He was holding himself back, looking at her like he didn't quite believe she was there. She looked away hastily.

"Rose, I –"

"Please don't." She said, and was horrified with how hoarse her voice sounded when it came out.

He swallowed, she heard it, and when she looked up again, he was nodding, hands resting on the back of the chair in front of him. He looked hopeless and confused, and she realized that he hadn't really ever been in this position before. For all his age, he looked like a little boy in that moment, and her gaze softened, making him perk up almost hopefully.

"You're such a hypocrite!" She suddenly burst out angrily, catching both him and herself by complete surprise. But it was like that hopeful look had burst the dam, and she felt angry words spilling from her like an uncontrollable flood. "I mean, don't even get me started on the way you behave, but oh _God_ how could you do that? How could you let me go to _Pete_ and _Jackie_ in that world and try to fit in with them when you knew what you did? "Angry tears poured out of her eyes then, and they wouldn't stop no matter how she scrubbed at her face. Within an instant he was around the table and at her side, wrapping her up in his arms. "No! NO! Get away! Get away from me!" She snapped at him, eyes unfocused from the water, hands beating weakly at his chest before he caught her wrists gently and held her through her struggles.

"So you know then." It wasn't a question, and Rose didn't treat it as such, weakly crying into his jacket as his arms came to wrap around her.

She hiccoughed. "How could you? You let me go be happy, but couldn't let yourself do the same?"

He pressed his face into her hair and let her sob and vent. His shirt was being ruined, but Rose didn't care, she didn't think he did either. "It's like I said, Rose. That parallel world was a gingerbread house."

"The Time Lords there, they were _alive_." She whispered at him. "And you didn't go to them." Her voice was angry and accusing, and he swallowed above her, back rubbing soothing circles on her back.

"I couldn't." He said, simply. "It wasn't my world."

She tried to struggle out of his embrace but he just clung to her tighter, refusing to let her go. "You hypocrite." She said again, but this time it was weaker, tinged with something soft. "You let me go to that mansion and you couldn't even make yourself happy."

Her arms slipped down from his chest to wrap around him then, and he held her tighter as she hiccoughed, and he breathed her in. "They gave you a mission." He said eventually, and she nodded against his chest. "Why?"

"Because it was my fault." She said, after a long moment. "There was an accident, and it was my fault."

He pulled back and looked her in the eye. "Show me, Rose. Show me what happened." He reached his hands up to her temple, and she closed her eyes, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

* * *

.

* * *

_A/n: New chapter! Only a little bit late, but then this one was horrible to write. Sorry if everyone's a little OOC in this chapter, I didn't do it on purpose._

_Next chapter: It finally comes out just how Rose managed to get back from Pete's World, Rose confronts Jack about his staff and what she has noticed, there are drinks, and Martha steps outside for air at a rather unfortunate moment._

_Please leave a review? –Shakes tin imploringly- _


	10. Chapter 10

It was always hard for the Doctor to describe the experience of entering someone else's mind. Partly because there wasn't any words for it, the way the mind flowed around him, yet remained entirely separate as he explored it, grasping on to vague ideas and images as they flashed by, his own self disembodied. If he had to describe it, he'd compare it to two rivers meeting and mingling; though that wasn't entirely true either, because they remained entirely separate at the same time until he chose to merge. There were books of Gallifreyan poetry on the subject, libraries of it, but no recount of the experience could truly capture it.

Quite frankly, it terrified him.

He entered Roses' mind with some trepidation, going carefully because he was such a large and ancient stream and she was so little and small, like the mighty Amazon crashing into a bubbling creek, and he stemmed his thoughts to a trickle to match hers, his subconscious held firmly back by a dam of triple-reinforced concrete. Humans had such small thoughts. Small minds, so hard to keep track of amidst the endless rush of psychic babble that the universe streamed with. To note them, to keep track of them as individuals would be mad, impossible – the human race was a collective. A thing. Individually, they were wonderful, but small, tiny, until one saw the sum of all those little streams as one. The human race was a typhoon when examined in whole. He was getting off track. He held his subconscious back as fiercely as he was able, and focused on physically talking, a process that was quite tricky when he was carefully keeping himself so separate from her.

"Imagine a door and open it, Rose. Let me in." It was a hard concept to get a grip on, the rivers of mentality. A non-telepathic being, one who could not see the sum of mentality couldn't grasp the rivers, the concepts, so they had to imagine. They couldn't give express permission, but implied permission was the same, so when a brief image flashed past him of an open door, so fleeting and small, he gently pressed the opening, moved his mentality into Rose's and slipped into her mind.

A shrill of emotions that weren't his own racked him briefly, and he threw them off with a slight mental shimmy, one of the first aspects of his training was to differentiate between his emotions and those of the person whose mind he entered. He was two minds at once. He thought twice, felt two emotions separately and simultaneously, was two people. He was the Doctor as much as he was Rose, the sum of thoughts of both of those two people, one keeping the expanse of time and memory at bay, and the other completely oblivious to the careful shielding that had been erected. That was always the most disconcerting part of the whole experience; the fact that they didn't know, that they couldn't see the dam holding back the crush. "If there's anything you don't want me to see, Rose, imagine a door and close it."

The Doctor part of him observed as the Rose part of him imagined a room with a whole string of doors, most open, but some firmly shut, others obviously locked and barred. A few had their doors slightly ajar as well, a sign that the Rose part of him didn't particularly want him to access those memories, but wouldn't hold him back if he tried. As a favour to that part of him, he projected an image for her, one of her Doctor standing in the room, walking slowly around it.

For the Doctor part of him, the experience was entirely different. Parts of the Rose's time stream shuttered off from him, parts of her mind wiped themselves from his access, names and faces instantly forgotten, never even known. The effect was like taking an eraser to a pencil mark – ghosts remained where something had been, but the image itself was gone. He slipped deeper into her mind, thinking as she did, bringing forth the Time Lor- no. There was something blocking that, a sense that that memory didn't make sense without accompaniment, like a backing tune with the melody missing. He slipped deeper, and drew what he was really looking for forward, slipping into the memory.

And it was a memory, fleeting impressions and inconsistent facts, nothing quite whole, but whole enough, the rest lost to time and space. He reconstructed it as best as his mind was able and slipped into it.

* * *

"Rose?"

It was Wednesday, the 30th of June, a bright, hot day in the peak of summer. The air-conditioner was buzzing slightly, struggling to keep up with the unexpected heat snap. It was the 10th day of soaring temperatures in a row and people were hot, sticky and irritable, Rose was all three. The paperwork in front of her was a blur of words and numbers, indefinable from the masses that she'd done before – a forgotten detail, superfluous and unimportant.

"Rose, are you even listening to me?"

"Sorry, Pete." She looked up then, away from the pen in her hands and straight into the blue eyed, ginger haired face of her surrogate father – Pete Tyler groaned at her. The eyes and the hair were stressed, the rest of the face slightly washed out as if it weren't important. Rose identified people by their eyes, the memory stressed.

There was a rush of details, exact wording forgotten, but the gist still there. Pete was explaining something, telling her something and the details rushed together to form one fact. He was telling her that she was required in interview. There was going to be a new batch of staff coming into Torchwood soon, and she was to be on the panel, given her experience. Displeasure came next, intense and gripping and unhappy. Rose didn't want to do this, but Pete had pulled rank.

The memory swam briefly and faded into another one, even less coherent and connected than the previous one. Sunday afternoon, the date uncertain, but a batch of faceless, undefined people stood before her, each trying to impress her, to convince her of their hiring potential. None of them knew the true reasoning behind Torchwood, they were here to impress her, and she was hard to impress. A woman stepped forward, big red stilettos sharpening on her otherwise bland feet. Featureless hands with long acrylic nails painted scarlet rapped upon the desk. Her hair flickered colours from brown to blonde and finally settled back on brown with a sort of dreamlike uncertainty, and her face was... hard to describe. Hazy. Forgotten. Just a woman with red nails and red shoes, even her clothing was undefined.

Simpering voice, high pitched and whiny, saying something that she'd only paid half-attention to, it sounded like a tape that had been played too many times, too crackly to sound like she had remembered any of what had been said.

And next; "Name?"

Oh, a flash and a detail omitted here, a ghost-like moment where he couldn't quite grasp the man, any details about him aside from the fact that he was there. The man's identity was a secret; but the Rose part of the Doctor's brain slipped as he looked up, directly into eyes of a deep cerulean blue, with slate flecks through them, familiar for some reason before they were chased away into Rose's memories. There had been freckles on the hidden memory's eyelids, faint and only there in the memory because Rose had been looking for them.

Confusion from the Doctor, and then painful focus. Sharp and there. The identity, the ghost, he had been given the job. The blue eyed, freckled one. And there had been yelling, weeks of anger aimed at her, coming squarely from Pete. But she had chosen him and there had been reasons, so many reasons that were carefully kept blank.

And she had helped him unpack. Where he had come from was uncertain, but the moving van had parked outside the apartment block he was living in, and she had spent a weekend of going up and down stairs, arms laden with boxes, and there was a blurry night, that started sharp, but became more and more foggy as the bottle of wine on the side table became more and more empty. All these favours for a stranger confused the Doctor, but it was as if this person was not a stranger, not to her, not with his sharp blue eyes that made her feel so sad, so strange like there was something impossibly wrong, that she couldn't reconcile.

It was late on the Sunday that she found it, an indiscrete pocket-watch buried beneath a pile of brown trousers. She asked him about it curiously, and his answer was completely devoid of any distinguishing vocal features or tone, but the words rang through clear as anything. "It belonged to my grandfather." The image shrugged. "He gave it to me in his will." She turned it over in her hands, silver on pink, studying the design, which was some sort of geometric pattern which the Doctor part of him rationalized she would have never been able to remember, if it was complex or unusual.

"Ever opened it?"

"No, why would I? It's broken. See?" The watch was taken from her hands into that of the image, and he had the feeling of being smiled at, dazzlingly, a smile that made the Rose part of his mind _ache._

The watch was opened and there was gold and screaming.

Oh.

_Oh._

* * *

The Doctor's eyes flew open as he hastily drew back from Rose's mind, his own head burning up with pain, encompassing his mind as he fell to his knees on the floor of Jack's study. His brain was _itching_ so badly that it hurt, something was wrong, something that he only half understood he was sure, and if Rose had hidden the memories of who the Time Lord was from him, what good was he trying to find out? Ask her? He didn't think so; her denial was inevitable as the itching slowly clawed its way back from his head and his fingers unclenched themselves from his scalp.

He was on the floor, curled into a foetal position and he wondered absently when that had happened. Rose was calling his name frantically, and there were noises that indicated there were people crowded around the door. His head was swimming, buzzing with ideas, and he looked up at Rose, something akin to horror straining to escape the confines of his will to display on his face. It was in his eyes, though, he could tell by the way she recoiled away from him.

He sat up suddenly, jumped to his feet. "Oh, I'm THICK." He yelled, arms shooting out to grab Roses' shoulders, who was halfway into standing. "So THICK. I didn't realize it because I couldn't remember the feeling, but it was there all along and I should have _recognized it!_"

The itching in his head, which wasn't itching, not at all, but rather a part of his brain that he no longer used clamouring for attention. There hadn't been a need, in all these times, no need for him to use that bit of his brain because there were none left, he didn't think about counting other worlds, did he?

"Recognised what, Doctor?" Martha's voice demanded from the doorway, but he only had eyes for Rose, and the way she was staring at him, some mixture of fear and wonder on her face. He grinned at her, and kissed her exuberantly on the forehead in a manner that he hadn't done since he had regenerated. She baulked and stared at him openly in shock.

"Oh Rose Tyler! I should have worked it out ages ago, and the TARDIS did! OH, you beautiful, clever thing!"

"Doctor!" Insistent voices came as a cacophony from the doorway, and they attracted his attention for a moment, before he grinned disarmingly at the whole room.

"The Time Lords! Arrogant, stupid old bastards, the lot of them! Except me of course, but then, that goes without saying, I was always the exception that proved the rule."

"What the HELL are you talking about, Doctor?" Donna and Jack demanded in unison, and he turned to them, taking a step forward and smiling.

"What I'm talking about, everyone, is –"

Rose made a noise that sounded like a discrete cough, and he felt his emotions flicker for a moment. Jacks' clueless expression settled the matter for him, after all Rose hadn't told him about it yet, and if Rose hadn't told Jack, that meant she didn't want Jack to know. His face shifted to seriousness as he turned to look back at her, and watched as she discreetly gave a single shake of her head.

"Are you sure, Rose?" He said, stepping back towards her and cupping her face with one hand. She looked directly at him and nodded. He sighed explosively and dropped his hand, turning away from her and running his hand through his spikes and over his face. "I don't like it, just so you know."

He felt her move, then, and something between them changed in that moment, the moment when she slipped her hand in his and rested her other hand upon his elbow, bringing her head to gently rest on the back of his shoulder. "Thank you." He tensed, startled, before he relaxed and tightened his fingers around hers.

"Who's for drinks?" He said, cheerily. "I believe that's the human custom at the end of the day, isn't it?" And he turned towards Rose, laughter in his eyes, and tugged her out of the room.

"But Doctor, What..?"

He ignored Martha's protest as he looked directly into Roses' eyes, feeling more buoyant and light-headed than he had in a while, and not quite sure why. "Run." He said, softly, and dragged her from the room, laughing.

* * *

The bar was small and dim, and though the night had started off carefree, the somberity of the setting eventually got to her, and played on her mind in the gloomy bar interior. She could hear Jack and Ianto laughing and singing drunkenly along with one of the songs in the jukebox, Donna was gossiping away with Martha and Gwen, and Toshiko and Owen were making the awkward, stilted conversation of people who were unsure how to approach the other when they didn't quite know how the other person felt about them.

"Dame Rose, would you care for a dance?"

Rose looked up from the bottom of her pint glass to find the Doctor grinning at her, with his arm extended towards her, hand inviting. She smiled at him and extended her own to take it, and he gently pulled her over to the floor, as the band started up a mournful song on the piano. He drew her close, resting his head on top of hers, as she relaxed into his chest, bringing her hands up to rest on his shoulders as his took up position on the small of her back. She tried to remind her body that this was desperately dangerous, that she couldn't get close to the Doctor for so many reasons, but it wasn't listening to her – it was too busy melting into the Doctor's embrace, and after so many of her protests fell flat, she politely told her mind to shut up and decided to enjoy this stolen moment as much as she could.

This was the Doctor; the proper one, and she felt like she could relax, knowing that.

_In the end you're all I want._

_In the end you're all I need._

The band was decent, the song whispered over the microphone in a voice that was better suited to country, rather than the low purr that the lyrics and melody really deserved, but still charming in its way. As he dragged her towards him, the Doctor gently rocked her and wrapped his arms around her and she felt safe for the first time in a long time.

She felt his lips in her hair, pressing gentle kisses to her crown, nuzzling every now and again and she relaxed further into his chest, the dual beat of his hearts comforting her more than any lullaby. Kisses were new, kisses were something that the older Doctor had indulged in on occasion, purely platonic and gentle, but then the regeneration had happened, and he had looked younger and suddenly they were no longer appropriate in the relationship, but now, now he – Her breath caught as he dragged her closer to him, leaning down so that his lips were next to the shell of her ear. "Don't think, Rose. Now's not the time for thinking."

_Any day now she'll appear..._

_With a truck stop souvenir_

_Just like she never left..._

_She'll whisper in my ear._

They swayed over the bar's small dance floor, both virtually still save for the gentle pull of breaths that Rose barely dared to take; encompassed as she was in sorrow and loneliness and courage and love she fought bitterly to deny, but was losing against for a second time, so much confusion running through her mind as the Doctor's hands stroked up and down her back soothingly in time with the music.

One of the Doctor's hands left her back and wrapped itself around strands of her hair as he pulled her into him, close and comforting and cool to the touch. She had forgotten the way they fitted so well, the way she felt like she belonged when he had his arms around her, like she was the most important thing in the world.

_In the end you're all I want._

_In the end you're all I need._

Rose started slightly when she realized that another voice had joined the growl of the singer, deep and ever so slightly off key, but not enough to be significantly noticeable. A purr, more than an actual attempt at singing, Rose thought, the Doctor was whispering only loud enough for her to hear, lips moving against her hair, chest reverberating slightly with the words. She looked up at him, startled, and he met her gaze, eyes dark with something that she didn't recognize, gracing her with an open, soul revealing look that shattered in a blink.

His hand came to cup her chin, and he caught her gaze with his, studying her face for something, but she didn't quite know what. And then it didn't matter as her eyes slid closed when he kissed them, and her forehead and her hair. "I missed you." She told him, though why she did she wasn't quite sure, but his 

breath caught and he grabbed her so tightly her chest could hardly move, and it was there, in that action that everything she knew he wouldn't say came to the forefront of what was between them.

She felt her breath catch, and fought against it, because all she'd done since he came back was cry and she didn't want to do it again. She wrapped herself in the strength that she'd developed in that other Torchwood, her protection, and she knew that he felt it.

_We'll get close by the bar..._

_With The Salesmen after dark._

_Just like you never left at all_

He was still singing to her, soft and under his breath, and she thought that maybe she was privileged in this, to hear him sing, barely audible words whispered against her forehead where he rested his lips.

He pulled back slowly, and her eyes slid open to watch him as he was watching her. "Let go, Rose." He said quietly, still gently rocking her in time to the music. "You're safe here."

The loneliness and the fear and the tired ache in her bones that had kept her going these long years slowly swept out of her at those words, and she started to sob, cursing how well he knew her under her breath. He always had known exactly what to say to get her to react and she knew he wasn't ever above using that knowledge for her own good. He drew her close and cradled her as the music continued, but now he didn't sing along, merely held her and comforted her gently. He never told her to stop crying, even though the other customers at the bar were looking at them, her a mess and him rigidly strong, acting as her lifeline.

_In the end you're all that I want._

_In the end you're all that I need._

_Never let me go... I'm complete_

_Any day now any day now... you'll see._

_In the end you're all I want._

_In the end you're all I need._

The dancers dissipated as the song ended, and he gently led her, one of his arms drawing her close to him, his other hand gently rubbing soothing circles on her back as he slowly walked backwards to one of the bars, sitting on a stool and pulling her against him. She sobbed into his jacket and he didn't mind the water ruining it, it seemed, as she blubbered.

"I'm sorry." She managed to choke out through the tears, but he shushed her and pulled her closer to him. "All I'm doing is crying. You must think I'm-"

"There's no need to apologize." He cut across her, and if anything that made her cry even harder. "You don't have to be strong anymore, Rose, if you don't want to be."

She clung to him, and had the feeling that her life depended on it. "I want to be." She whispered to the Doctor, to his ears and his only, "But I don't think I remember how." She hiccoughed slightly. "So much happened. So much changed. I don't think I'm the girl you remember, not anymore."

"You know," He whispered to her, dragging her into his lap and pressing her head against his shoulder with one of his deceptively strong hands. "Given what I saw today, I'd be more frightened if you hadn't been affected by it." He kissed her hair again, and she wondered at his penchant toward doing that now that they were reunited. It was like he was desperate to touch her, to reaffirm that she was there. It felt like it was something he'd always wanted to do, but had never had the chance before. "You remember Rose Tyler's smile still? She's got a cheeky grin that lights the skies more than a sun ever could. Have you seen it?"

She let out a watery, choked laugh and brought her hand up to his shoulder, sitting sideways in his lap, legs draped over his. He reached around behind her and dragged his greatcoat over them both, stroking the side of her face tenderly. "So what do you say, Rosie-Rose? Let me help you?"

"...That would be nice." She said, feeling exhausted and still hiccoughing slightly, even though her fit of sobs had stopped. The alcohol in her system was making her head foggy and the noises of the room were fading out as her eyelids drooped heavily. She was warm and comfortable and safe, wrapped in her Doctor's arms – her _proper_ Doctor's arms, and he was brushing her hair away from her forehead and rubbing her back in soothing circles. She knew he still didn't know the half of it, and thoughts of the horror that was what Jack's team meant still chased themselves around her mind, but for now she felt she could let them go, if only for a little while.

The next song chased her into dreams, the lyrics floating through her mind before conscious thought left her.

_She said "Would you lift me up? Lift me up again?_

_Like a hijacked aeroplane, let's go down in flames._

_And burn the night away."_

* * *

"I'll be back in a sec." Martha said, trying to ignore the fact that Rose was sitting in the Doctor's lap, and that he was looking entranced down at her, like the shock of her being there had finally settled; or that the fact she was back had finally sunk in. More likely the latter, Martha rationalized.

She felt guilty, she had to admit, that the sight of the two of them there made something curl in her stomach, some unbidden and unwanted remaining flare of jealousy snarled in her belly when she looked at the way he looked at her. She felt unfaithful to both her friends and to her fiancé when she felt that, 

because really, she had moved on from the Doctor. She didn't want to be in a romantic relationship with him anymore, and she had to compose herself before something unpleasant that she would later regret happened.

She made her steady way outside to recompose herself, waving at Jack and Ianto when she passed them, and stopping only briefly at the pool table to distract Owen from winning the game he was playing against Gwen. (He swore vehemently and she ignored him with a flair.)

She sighed and leaned on the pub wall, watching the traffic move at a leisurely pace around the Cardiff roads.

There, standing across the street, was the Doctor.

Martha did a double take, and looked back through one of the bar windows, to see the Doctor still sitting with Rose in his lap, and then she double checked across the road, to where the Doctor was standing quite contentedly, looking at the pub with a complacent expression. The Doctor across the road straightened and smiled at her, crossing and coming up to lean on the wall next to her.

"This is some kind of time thing, right? You're a Doctor from the past or the future, right?" Martha said, straightening and taking a nervous step away from the man in front of her.

He sighed, almost ironically, and folded his arms in front of him. The Doctor never folded his arms. "Not quite, Miss Martha Jones." He said, smiling.

And it was then she noticed – this Doctor, the one in front of her; he had blue eyes.

"Oh, and I'm sorry about this." He said, stepping towards her, as she took in a breath to call out to the people in the bar. "I'm so sorry."

He smiled vindictively.

"DOCT-" She was cut off mid scream, when he pointed some sort of device at her forehead, and she crumpled to the ground, knowing no more.

* * *

.

* * *

_A/n: Yes, you're all very clever. Well done to everyone who figured that plot development out before. _

_I took out tow of the scenes of this chapter because it was really getting far too long for my liking. I could have taken out the shameless songfic, but I LIKE that song and it's so appropriate at this point in the fic. The Time Lord scene didn't fit in very well in this chapter, but it fits in niceley at some point soon, so it's going there instead  
_

_Next chapter: Martha's gone missing! How will the others react to this development? And finally, that confrontation between Rose and Jack that I've been promising for a few chapters. It's important, it will happen, dammit! _

_Leave a little review? –Rattles tin, as per usual- (I mean, two updates in a week! For me that's completely unheard of!)  
_


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